Amazon.com plans to make DRM-free MP3 music downloads from Sony BMG Music Entertainment available to customers on Amazon MP3 later this month, making Amazon MP3 the only retailer to offer customers DRM-free MP3s from all four major music labels (in addition to over 33,000 independent labels). I"ve said it before, and I"ll say it again: "Finally, a real iTunes competitor". Amazon"s DRM-free MP3 digital music store, where every song is playable on virtually any digital music-capable device, prices songs from 89 cents to 99 cents.
Launched in September 2007, Amazon MP3 offers Earth"s Biggest Selection of à la carte DRM-free MP3 music downloads, which now includes over 270,000 artists. Every song and album (usually priced between $5.99 and $9.99) in the Amazon MP3 music download store is available exclusively in the MP3 format without DRM software and is encoded at 256 Kbps. Anyone want to take bets on how long it will take Microsoft to offer the Amazon MP3 store directly from the Zune software?
"We are excited to offer Amazon MP3 customers DRM-free MP3s from SONY BMG, which represents many of the most popular musicians from the past and present. Our Amazon MP3 customers will be able to choose from a full selection of DRM-free music downloads from all four major labels and over 33,000 independents that they can play on virtually any music-capable device," said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President for Digital Music.