Hey, this is a biggish story for you. The Universal Music Group is to follow rival EMI into the domain of non-DRMed downloads. The largest of the major record companies announced last week that as of 21 Aug it will be selling "thousands" of albums and individual tracks without any digital rights management technology embedded. The non-DRM move is officially a "test" that will run to January, but it is a significant move nonetheless.
The non-DRMed music will be available in the US via Real Networks' Rhapsody, PureTracks, Best Buy and Wal-Mart's download platforms and, once it launches, Amazon's new digital music service. Unlike EMI, who sell their non-DRMed catalogue at a premium price, of course, Universal's DRM-free tracks should retail for the same price as those that are encrypted, though pricing may vary from download platform to download platform.
But the biggest dimension to this story is that Universal does not plan to make its DRM-free catalogue available to Apple's iTunes during the pilot period. EMI, of course, did the opposite, giving the Apple service exclusivity rights to its DRM-free catalogue at launch. According to Billboard, some sources say Universal decided to leave out Apple so they could compare the sales of DRM-free music from other outlets to the sales of DRMed music from iTunes. However, other sources say the move is part of Universal's attempts to reduce Apple's dominance of the digital music market.
They quote one 'source' as saying: "We want to have a robust digital marketplace where there's healthy competition. We don't have that now. Apple has a stranglehold on the whole thing, so much so that all the other online retailers are badly disadvantaged because you can't buy music from their stores and play it on the iPod. We want to open up the market and create a more level playing field. We want to give other retailers a chance to compete".