“Amazon.com said on Wednesday the company will launch a digital music store later in 2007 with millions of songs, free of copy protection technology that limits where consumers can play their music,” Reuters reports.
MacDailyNews Note: Amazon says in their press release that they’ll use the old MP3 format. Apple’s iTunes store uses the AAC format which provides audio encoding that compresses much more efficiently than older formats like MP3. AAC offers many advantages over MP3 including improved compression provides higher-quality results with smaller file sizes, support for multichannel audio, providing up to 48 full frequency channels, higher resolution audio, yielding sampling rates up to 96 kHz, and improved decoding efficiency, requiring less processing power for decoding.
Reuters continues, “The Seattle-based company said music company EMI, home to artists ranging from Coldplay to Norah Jones to Joss Stone to Pink Floyd, has licensed its digital catalog to Amazon, the second such deal in a month.”
“Early last month, EMI said it would make its music available online without a key anti-piracy measure, becoming the first major music group to take the risk in a bid to grow digital sales,” Reuters reports. “With all music companies struggling from a drop in the sale of physical albums, EMI, announced its first deal with Apple and the iTunes online music store in April.”
Reuters reports, “Warner Music Group has said it sees no logic to dropping DRM but is still testing music without it, while Vivendi’s Universal Music has said it, too, is still testing tracks without DRM.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “bizarro ballmer” for the heads up.]
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos should thank Steve Jobs profusely. And Warner will eventually capitulate.
