Amazon’s new tune

SEATTLE – Internet retailer Amazon.com said Wednesday it will launch a digital music store later this year featuring only songs without copyright-protection restrictions, so tracks can be played on anything from personal computers to Apple Inc.’s iPods or Microsoft Corp.’s Zune players. Executives at the Seattle-based company said they decided to steer clear of digital-rights management technology, because consumers want to be able to listen to their downloads on any device they choose.

Bill Carr, Amazon.com’s vice president of digital media, said the company believes its DRM-free strategy “is helping to pave the way for a much better, much more customer-centric experience in digital music.”

Seattle-based Amazon.com did not say how much it will charge for music downloads, which will be sold a la carte rather than through a subscription service.

Carr said Amazon.com has always focused on giving customers good bargains and hinted that music will be offered at various prices.

“We have a track record of being very competitive on price and offering very low prices to customers,” Carr told the Associated Press. “We also have a track record of offering a wide range of price points on our products, too. There’s not one or two or three price points on our CD store today – there are many, many different price points.”

Amazon.com said its store will feature millions of songs from 12,000 labels but announced only one of its partners: Britain’s EMI Music Group PLC. Amazon.com said it would announce more labels when the service goes live but did not specify a launch date.

Last month, EMI agreed to let Apple sell tracks without the copy-protection technology on its iTunes Music Store. The DRM-free tracks cost 30 cents more than copy-restricted versions of EMI songs, which cost 99 cents per track. The premium tracks also feature enhanced sound quality.

Apple has yet to begin selling the EMI tracks but has said it would make them available on iTunes sometime this month.

Asked how Amazon.com plans to compete with Apple’s market-leading iTunes store, Carr said the Web merchant has a huge customer base, with 66 million active accounts, and touted the success of its CD store, which in the United States alone offers some 1 million titles.

Barney Wragg, head of EMI’s global digital division, said the company believes Amazon.com’s entry in the digital music business will make an intensely competitive market even more competitive.

“Amazon has proven it’s a really competitive, successful retailer in the CD business and we’re very excited about having people who have a proven track record come into the download business,” Wragg said.

EMI also announced deals to sell music without copy restrictions in France, through Virgin Stores’ VirginMega chain, and with several online music retailers in Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

Warner Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG, declined to comment. Vivendi’s Universal Music Group did not immediately return calls seeking comment Wednesday.

The other major recording companies have released some tracks without DRM hurdles online either as part of experiments or sales promotions. Still, they insist that safeguards are still needed to stave off online piracy and make other digital music business models work.

IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian said she thinks Amazon.com could push the digital music market forward by pressuring more major music labels to sell DRM-free music.

“We think Amazon’s position in the market could be influential enough to move some if not all of the remaining majors toward offering MP3-encoded, DRM-free downloads,” Kevorkian said.

“The majors need to be looking at new ways and better ways to sell music to consumers because they’re suffering substantial declines in their core CD business,” Kevorkian added.