The announcement that Amazon.com (AMZN) will be opening an online music download store without digital-rights management (DRM), could put increasing pressure on the music industry to offer this as an option. At this time only EMI, of the major music companies, offers to sale their music this way.
That of course means that EMI music will be a key anchor of the Amazon.com initiative. Along with EMI will be 12,000 independent labels that will also provide music for the store.
The company won't be offering a subscription service, but will sell the songs individually at variable prices yet unnamed.
IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian said concerning the new service that "We think Amazon's position in the market could be influential enough to move some if not all of the remaining majors toward offering MP3-encoded, DRM-free downloads. The majors need to be looking at new ways and better ways to sell music to consumers because they're suffering substantial declines in their core CD business."
The other three major labels, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment still maintain that the DRM safeguards are needed to make the digital music model work.
This move by Amazon.com could definitely push them to change their minds.
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