By Stevie Smith Dec 28, 2007, 13:26 GMT
The music industry’s gradual shift towards accepting the removal of copy protection has taken another step towards the inevitable this week with Warner Music Group signing on the dotted line to bring its DRM-free music to Amazon’s music download portal.
Warner Bros brings DRM-free music to Amazon's download portal. Credit: Warner Music Group.
The move comes as somewhat of a surprise considering that Warner rebuffed Apple CEO Steve Jobs back in February of 2006 when he called for the world’s major media producers to abandon restrictive copy protection. At that time, Warner’s chairman Edgar Bronfman said that specifically removing DRM protection from its music was not an option as feature films and videogames also carry such protection to prevent illegal copying.
Warner Music Group is the third of the world’s ‘big four’ media companies to have buckled under increasing pressure to remove copy devices from their property, which leaves only Sony BMG Music Entertainment as the remaining major player still resisting the change. However, a recent New York Times report has suggested that an upcoming Sony promotion scheduled for early 2008 could see the company begin to shift its focus.
EMI Group was the first notable label to drop DRM protection back in April of 2007 when it agreed to bring its music to Apple’s iTunes store. Similarly, the world’s biggest media company, Vivendi Universal, dropped copy protection at the end of the summer, bringing its music to online stores operated by Amazon, Real Networks, and Wal-Mart.
While the new Warner Music deal is presently in place with just Amazon, reports indicat that the company is also exploring avenues that would bring its music to iTunes as well. Vivendi Universal is yet to bring its content to iTunes amid concerns that Apple’s own dominance in the digital music marketplace is stifling competition from rival portals.
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