Amazon launches digital music store
Updated on 26 September 2007
Web retailer Amazon.com has launched its much-anticipated digital music store with nearly 2.3 million songs, all without copy-protection technology.
The store, Amazon MP3, lets shoppers buy and download individual songs or entire albums with a single click.
The tracks can be copied to multiple computers, burned to CDs and played on most types of PCs and portable devices, including Apple's iPod and Microsoft's Zune.
To make buying several tracks or a whole album at once an easy, one-click process, Amazon has developed the Amazon MP3 Downloader, a lightweight application that automatically sends purchased music to the buyer's iTunes or Windows Media Player library.
Customers who don't want to install the software can still buy songs one at a time.
Major music labels Universal Music Group and EMI Music have signed on to sell their tracks on Amazon, as have thousands of independent labels.
The company said several smaller labels are selling their music without copy protection for the first time on the Amazon store, including Rounder Records and Trojan Records.
Bill Carr, Amazon's vice president for digital music, said the company has been testing Amazon MP3 internally for a long time.
Amazon's store faces Apple's market-leading iTunes, which also has taken steps to offer some songs without so-called digital rights management technology.
EMusic.com, another popular download site, also sells tracks in the DRM-free MP3 format but, like Amazon's store, doesn't offer artists on some major music labels that still require anti-piracy locks.
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