Every song and album in Amazon’s digital music store will be available exclusively in the DRM-free MP3 format.
Once again EMI leads the way in making its music library available to companies that actually have a decent plan to help it compete against piracy.
No doubt realizing that it must figure out a way to effectively compete with Apple’s iTunes, Amazon.com fired an important salvo in its battle for the hearts and minds of consumers by announcing that it will only offer music content that is free of DRM.
Again EMI has made its music library available to a company that realizes that it must offer a credible alternative to piracy if it is to be successful in the long run. DRM has made many music customers weary of purchasing content from certain stores and venues because they become locked in to a particular platform or media player.
Amazon’s DRM-free MP3s will allow customers to play their music on virtually any media playback device, , including PCs, Macs, iPods, Zunes, Zens, and will enable them to burn songs to CDs for personal use.
“Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO. “We’re excited to have EMI joining us in this effort and look forward to offering our customers MP3s from amazing artists like Coldplay, Norah Jones and Joss Stone.”
“Amazon.com is known around the world for the unique experience it offers music customers through features such as customer reviews and personalized recommendations,” said Eric Nicoli, EMI CEO. “They have been an important retail partner of ours, and we are delighted they will be offering consumers EMI’s new premium DRM-free downloads in their new digital music store. We think having a trusted destination like Amazon.com offer a high-quality digital music product that will play across a number of devices gives consumers more options and will be a significant boost for the overall digital music market.”
This is good news for consumers and EMI alike because it means that a music label is actually hearing the concerns people have about purchasing content which limits them in their options of usage and reduces its value and operability. If music labels expect to compete with piracy it must be able to prove to consumers that there are benefits to purchasing content, and allowing consumers the freedom to use their music as they see fit is a step in the right direction.
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this is a HUGE step forward it’s a really big deal…has zeropaid passion gone downhill or is there another reason there’s been no discussion on this topic today?
Im passionate about it
Means others may then follow in their footsteps
You can ask soulxtc if I said that this is where music downloads were headed way before this happened. It was simply logical to think that there is no way music with DRM was going to compete with music with no DRM. Now if they can just get a reasonable price they may just have something…….
@Meyou123
(pins gold star on Meyou123)
Yes u did indeed
I think what really forced their hand was Europe telling Apple that continued iTunes DRM loc-in wouldn’t fly. Guess it was their turn to bail us out for a change.
i agree meyou it’s headed for the better. http://www.gomusic.com is the model the big 5 just need to follow. if they would have followed 10 years ago mp3 sharing would be damn near non-existant…and the music industry stronger than ever. what a bunch of fools.