Seattle – Web retailer Inc. launched its much-anticipated digital music store Tuesday with nearly 2.3 million songs, none of them protected against copying.
The store, Amazon MP3, lets shoppers buy and download individual songs or entire albums. The tracks can be copied to multiple computers, burned onto CDs and played on most types of PCs and portable devices, including Apple’s iPod and Microsoft’s Zune. Songs cost 89 cents to 99 cents each, and albums sell for $5.99 to $9.99.
Major music labels Universal Music Group and EMI Music Publishing have signed on to sell their tracks on Amazon, as have thousands of independent labels. The company said several smaller labels are selling their music without copy protection for the first time on the Amazon store, including Rounder Records and Trojan Records.
Amazon’s store competes with Apple’s market-leading iTunes, which is also offering some songs without digital rights management (DRM) technology, which prevents unauthorized copies from playing.
