Amazon to sing DRM-free tunes

Amazon plans to launch a digital music store later this year, featuring music downloads without copyright restrictions.

The e-commerce giant announced on Wednesday that it would offer songs from more than 12,000 record labels in the MP3 format, without the controversial digital rights management (DRM) software. Record labels are beginning to warm up to the concept of offering music downloads without DRM, after waging war with peer-to-peer companies over distributing their copyrighted music and over piracy issues.

"Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device," Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive, said in a statement.

Users will be able to play their music on virtually any device, including PCs, iPods, Zunes and Zens, as well as burn the songs on CDs for personal use.

In making the announcement, Amazon also noted it has teamed up with EMI Music to offer songs from its digital catalogue. As part of its digital music store, Amazon will offer EMI's new, premium DRM-free downloads.

That's the second deal EMI has struck since announcing it would begin offering DRM-free music downloads at a premium price. Last month, EMI and Apple struck a similar deal with the computer maker's iTunes store. Apple is expected to offer the label's DRM-free music beginning this month at 99p per song, versus DRM-protected music for 79p a song.

Last year, Yahoo Music began to test the concept of DRM-free music. Yahoo offered a single song without DRM from singer Jessica Simpson.