
Amazon plans to take its DRM-free music offering worldwide
By Jacqui Cheng
January 28, 2008 - 11:56AM CT
Online music buyers around the world will soon be able to partake in Amazon's offerings, as the company plans to roll out its DRM-free music store internationally throughout 2008. The company, however, did not details on which regions it planned to target, nor did it give a specific time frame for when the rollout would begin.
Considering that the company already has localized sites set up for countries like Japan, Canada, and the UK, though, it's probably safe to assume that those will be some of the countries that will get access to the music store first. Amazon has been on the anti-DRM warpath lately, having just launched its music store in late September of last year. Since then, it has been signing on label after label to offer their music in 256kbps MP3 format, which it brags is compatible with practically every music-playing device under the sun.
Amazon topped off its collection earlier this month by signing on Sony BMG, and now offers music from all the Big Four (Universal, EMI, Warner Music, and Sony BMG) plus 33,000 independent labels. No other DRM-free store has as wide a selection as Amazon does, making Amazon a major force to reckon with in today's online music market. iTunes, the long-time leader in online music, still only offers DRM-free tracks from EMI, and not in MP3 format (all iTunes tracks are encoded as AAC files).
And the others—such as eMusic, 7digital, PureTracks, and Amie Street—have just a sprinkling of bigger names with their smaller labels. Amazon also offers slightly more competitive prices than its number one rival (iTunes), with most tracks going for 89¢ apiece instead of iTunes' standard 99¢. Yahoo is, however, apparently planning its own DRM-free music store that could potentially rival Amazon's.

Ars Technica
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