On May 16, Amazon.com announced that it would launch an online digital music store "later this year" offering "millions of songs in the DRM-free MP3 format from more than 12,000 record labels." EMI, which recently announced that it would partner with the iTunes Media Store to release premium DRM-free MP3 downloads there, "is the latest addition to the store." Amazon claims that every song and album in the Amazon.com digital music store will be available exclusively as unfettered MP3 files.
The customer advantage to DRM-unencumbered MP3 files is that they play on almost every personal digital player and can be recorded to CD for ease of use and back up. The advantage for Amazon is that it doesn't have to buy in to a single company's platform—the Internet giant can sell to consumers with iPods, Zunes, Zens, PCs, and Macs. The cynical amongst us might believe that's what the excitement is really about.
The cynical amongst us might also notice how short on facts the above announcement is. On my first scan of the press release, I read "every song and album in the Amazon.com digital music store will be available . . ." as every song and album available at Amazon.com will be available . . . . However, as time passes and no further details have been released, I have started to wonder.
Why mention only EMI? Why not list some other labels and bands? Heck, why not mention what kind of files the store will make available? SanDisk's senior marketing director Eric Bone suggested one reason to This Week in Consumer Electronics: "[The other labels] will let EMI [and Apple] give them answers," about how unshackled files affect other sales. The Amazon.com deal represents an even bigger sales risk, Bone feels, because the Apple deal involves DRM-free AAC downloads, "making it DRM-free but not format-free."
So what we have is an announcement that sometime in the future Amazon.com wants to sell us a lot of music as un–copy-protected digital files. Of course, it already does that in the form of compact discs. But sometime in the future, we'll be offered something else—we don't know what or when or how good it will be or what it will cost, but we can rest assured that it will not have DRM.
Whoopee.
