Let the music play

Digital rights management is out. Industry giants are now allowing music file downloads without copying restrictions.

The idea of ditching "digital rights management" (DRM) for music downloads is changing from dream to business reality.

Amazon said recently that it would open an online store that stocks only mp3 music files without copying restrictions. That would be huge news, except that Amazon is only catching up with Apple, which announced in early April that it would offer DRM-free downloads.

Both stores have the public backing of EMI, one of the four big record labels, which also said it would sell unrestricted music downloads at some European sites.

Copy, not copyright

This should delight customers, who will no longer have to worry about being able to listen to their song files on their next music player or their computer. But it must unsettle many music industry executives.

Abandoning the copy-control systems was not only meant to stop people from sharing a new digital purchase on the internet but also to keep buyers from listening to downloads on unauthorised hardware or software.

Changing tune

But when the biggest music download store, one of the biggest CD retailers and a Big Four record label think they should drop that approach, it means things have changed drastically.

iTunes shoppers will not have long to wait for this liberation from copying limits. Apple said the new downloads would be available at $1.29 (Dh9.5) a song. These downloads will also come at a higher bit rate, meaning they should sound better but will take up twice as much space on your iPod or computer.

Amazon customers may face a longer delay, as the retailer will not specify a launch date more specific than "later this year". It also will not talk about pricing or describe its inventory besides saying the store will carry the catalogues of EMI and "more than 12,000" other labels.

Hinting at more

Amazon did, however, offer hints. Bill Carr, the site's vice-president of digital media, suggested that the download store would follow the same pattern as Amazon's CD store: "A couple of our tried-and-true tenets are broad selection and great prices."

That suggests Amazon expects to sell music from all the major labels, not just EMI. The minor labels, many of which don't share the majors' fixation on copying restrictions, are probably already on board.

A publicist for one Washington-area independent label confirmed that his employer's catalogue would indeed be carried on Amazon.

If Amazon's download store mirrors the outlines of its CD store, you can also expect labels to compete on price - something Apple does not like.

Apple and Amazon should soon have company. In addition to the many sites that stock mp3s from smaller labels, Yahoo has experimented with selling regular mp3s, and MySpace has revealed plans for its own mp3 store.

When copy-restriction routines no longer assign songs to certain players or programs, a few other things will change.

Spoilt for choice

Music buyers can return to treating their purchases as their property - reselling as they see fit or passing them on to their heirs. They will also be free to choose digital-music formats, programs and players based on their price and quality, instead of being limited to those supported by one download store.

Apple's iPod - which dominated the market before the arrival of the iTunes Store - should still do well, as should the Advanced Audio Coding format Apple uses for iTunes downloads. But Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format could be drifting onto the rocks; its fans are not users but the stores that sell copy-controlled WMA files.

Some of those users will still take music online without paying for it. DRM has yet to make a meaningful dent in that, but convenient, fairly priced and well-stocked download stores like iTunes have.

As people get to enjoy downloads from various sites on all of their devices, more of them may wonder why their films remain trapped inside the usage restrictions.

Why should Apple's iTunes or Amazon's Unbox sell video downloads that cannot be burned to DVD? How long until some enterprising studio makes the same decision as EMI and decides to give customers what they want?