James Delahunty
26 Mar 2008 8:57
After launching a music service six months ago that only offers digital audio downloads without Digital Rights Management (DRM), Amazon has taken the No. 2 spot in sales after Apple Inc.'s iTunes. Last year, Apple and EMI announced a ground-breaking deal to sell digital music downloads without digital rights management (DRM) technology.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs had predicted that by the end of 2007, half of the iTunes catalog would be DRM-free. However, that simply didn't happen because Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group opted to sell DRM-free downloads through Amazon's service instead.
As it stands, iTunes offers about 2 million DRM-free songs from EMI and independent record companies, while Amazon has 4.5 million DRM-free downloads to offer. A situation such as this was to be expected however as many record industry figures loathe the control that Apple has over the market for digital downloads.
"Amazon's arrival removed some of the stranglehold iTunes had on the market," says Ted Cohen, a former EMI Music executive and managing partner of the Tag Strategic consulting firm. Pete Baltaxe, Amazon's director of digital music said that customers have sent a lot of positive feedback about the lack of DRM restrictions on the music sold.