Amazon to sell unrestricted songs

Amazon is finally taking on Apple.

The Seattle-based online retail powerhouse said Wednesday that it would open a digital music store with a consumer-friendly twist that, Amazon hopes, will give Apple's iTunes a run for its money.

The difference: Customers could do anything they want with the songs they buy.

Pushing back against a key part of the recording industry's anti-piracy efforts, Amazon.com Inc. said none of the millions of tracks it planned to sell would be encumbered by software that restricted copying. That means people could play the songs on iPods or any other music player and burn them onto CDs an unlimited number of times.

Plus, Amazon already has millions of online shoppers and sophisticated software that recommends products based on customer tastes.

"There's much more potential for Amazon to be a competitor than anyone else," Gartner Inc. analyst Mike McGuire said. "They did write the book on e-commerce."

The store, which is expected to go live as early as this fall, features songs from music giant EMI Group and thousands of smaller record labels -- but none of the other majors so far. EMI, the world's third-biggest record label, broke with its peers in April and said it would soon begin offering unshackled songs from Norah Jones, Coldplay and other top artists for sale through iTunes. It did the same Wednesday with Amazon.

Amazon's vow to sell music not limited by so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software deals a big blow to the major record labels. They have tried to keep electronic versions of songs in a format that's difficult to illegally share.

Music industry insiders said privately that Amazon's clout might eventually force them to give up their effort to use technology to restrict what people do with the digital music they buy.

"The other labels will capitulate," said Peter Fader, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

EMI's three biggest rivals -- Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group -- offered no public response Wednesday to Amazon's announcement.

Amazon said its store would feature music from 12,000 record labels, but it didn't name any besides EMI. The company also declined to say how much it would charge for each song. Apple sells most tracks for 99 cents, and this month will start selling DRM-free songs for $1.29 apiece.