Sony BMG Plans to Drop DRM
The last major label will throw in the towel on digital rights management and prepare to fight Apple for valuable download revenues

In a move that would mark the end of a digital music era, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is finalizing plans to sell songs without the copyright protection software that has long restricted the use of music downloaded from the Internet, BusinessWeek.com has learned. Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony (SNE) and Bertelsmann, will make at least part of its collection available without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software some time in the first quarter, according to people familiar with the matter. Sony BMG would become the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM, following Warner Music Group (WMG), which in late December said it would sell DRM-free songs through Amazon.com's (AMZN) digital music store. EMI and Vivendi's Universal Music Group announced their plans for DRM-free downloads earlier in 2007.

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  thanks to Politics in the Zeros

[cue Happy Days Are Here Again] I've been a long subscriber to eMusic, which sells MP3s that have no digital rights management. They can be played on any MP3 player. Most of what they have are from independent labels. Now Amazon is selling MP3s without digital rights management from the major labels. eMusic charges $.33 a track and Amazon seems to charge $.89 and $.99 per track with discounts on albums. Led Zeppelin IV for $7.72. Not only is DRM dead but CDs must be an endangered species.