Warner loosens copy protection for Amazon

Stephen Withers
Monday, 31 December 2007 04:39

Business IT - Technology

Warner Music is set to offer DRM-free music downloads through Amazon.

In early 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs called on music labels to drop copy protection, which is the major source of incompatibility between downloaded music and popular music players. At the time, Warner chairman described such a plan as "completely without logic".

Since then, EMI and Universal have started offering unprotected MP3 and AAC versions of their catalogues, though Universal has chosen not to make the unprotected tracks available through iTunes.

According to reports, Warner also wants a deal with Apple.

The spreading sale of unprotected tracks means people who own iPods or WMA-based music players are not limited to online music stores that use the corresponding technology, but can instead pick and choose. If a track is available on Amazon at $US0.89, there's no need for an iPod owner to pay $US0.99 at the iTunes Store, for example.

The removal of copy-protection does little to address the other big problem faced by music buyers, which is the artificial geographical segmentation of markets. This means retailers need to negotiate separately for the rights to sell tracks to customers in the US, UK and Australia, for example. Consequently, not all tracks offered by the iTunes Store in the US are also available in Australia, and prices vary between markets. Amazon currently only sells to customers in the US.