Amazon.com has announced it will launch a digital music store later this year offering millions of songs from more than 12,000 record labels. All music in the store will be available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software. This will allow customers to play their music on virtually any of their personal devices, including personal computers and portable media players, and to burn songs to CDs for personal use.
The new Amazon approach is clearly aimed at drawing market share away from Apple’s iTunes store and other online sources, which use DRM coding to limit the type and number of copies of downloaded music. "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.
EMI Music's digital catalog is the latest addition to the store, which means that artists like Coldplay, Norah Jones and Joss Stone will be among those available. No date was given for the launch of the DRM-free Amazon store.
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