Following the previously reported announcement last week that Universal plans to follow EMI and make its music available without digital rights management technology embedded, albeit officially for a "trial period", Music Week has reported that both Amazon and Yahoo! now plan to launch MP3 based download platforms, including the Universal catalogue, in the next six months - the former next month, the latter in the New Year.
Amazon's digital music offer has been in the pipeline for sometime, of course, with the company seemingly determined to only sell non-DRMed MP3 tracks when its service finally launches. With EMI, who started offering non-DRMed music earlier this year, already signed up to Amazon, and with Universal seemingly now on board also, now would be as good a time as any for the service to launch.
If Amazon is able to launch an MP3 based service next month with two majors on board, it will give the company a real opportunity to take on current digital music market leader iTunes, especially because Universal have somewhat controversially barred the Apple service from accessing its DRM-free catalogue. It's long been thought that Amazon, with its existing large base of music consumers, was one of the few firms that could genuinely take on Apple for market dominance, and with Universal's help that could as yet happen.
Should Amazon launch with both EMI and Universal on board, and should that prove successful, it will be interesting to see how long Warner and SonyBMG can hang on before also making their catalogues available without DRM.