Amazon.com announced Thursday that it would start selling music from Sony BMG without restrictive digital rights management software. The move makes Sony the fourth and last of the major record labels to offer music in the open MP3 format through Amazon.com.

It additionally means that Amazon has eclipsed Apple in sales of DRM-free music. Apple CEO Steve Jobs started the movement to get rid of DRM in an open letter in which he said a “world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats” is “clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.”

Apple led the move with a deal to sell EMI tracks in both DRM-protected and DRM-free MP3 formats, offering higher-quality MP3s at a higher price than tracks protected with Apple’s FairPlay DRM software. Amazon sells only DRM-free MP3s.

DRM Withers

“DRM is dying,” Tim Bajarin, principal analyst with Creative Strategies, said in an interview. “Basically

all the studios are embracing” the DRM-free model considering “they have to give consumers what they want,” he said. “There are abundant citizens who will pay for DRM-free music that it becomes a viable part of the business.”

Some analysts have speculated that the labels are making deals with Amazon in a bid to reduce Apple’s ability by the online music business. Jobs has clashed with studio executives repeatedly by the price of restricted tracks and albums.

But the Sony-Amazon deal will not be the last announcement. When Warner Music Group announced its deal with Amazon, Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. said the company would announce many more deals “in the coming weeks and months. Many have argued that we could and should have done that faraway ago.”

Deals with Apple Imminent?

Bajarin emphasized that the Sony-Amazon MP3 deal doesn’t mean a similar deal with Apple won’t be forthcoming….

Original post by Top Tech News