Amazon announces today that it will launch a digital music store offering millions of songs DRM-free, from more than 12,000 record labels. EMI is the latest record label to sign on. Amazon's digital music store is set for release later this year.
Subsequently, Amazon has decided that all music available for download through its site will be DRM-free, enabling customers to play their music on any device. EMI is of course the leading record label willing to offer up its digital catalog in an unprotected mp3 format, initially granting its songs to iTunes earlier this year. The existing relationship between Amazon and EMI no doubt helped this deal along, and with EMI blazing the trail for major record labels to offer more unprotected music for sale, others will follow.
With Amazon being the king of the longtail ideal, it's great that it will be selling music in digital format, and better that it's DRM-free. We're wondering what took so long. Talks of Amazon's digital music store have been going on for years. Selling through Amazon opens up DRM-free songs to an incredibly broad audience. Until now, most places to get unprotected mp3s required a membership for a service like iTunes or Microsoft's Zune, or were limited to relatively smaller communities such as Blast My Music, with a limited and somewhat niche reach.