Amazon digital music store goes online

Associated Press: Amazon Digital Music Store Goes Online.

Amazon.com introduced its widely anticipated digital music store on Tuesday with nearly 2.3 million songs, none of them protected against copying.

The store, Amazon MP3, will allow shoppers to buy and download individual songs or entire albums. The tracks can be copied to several computers, burned onto compact discs and played on most types of PCs and portable devices, including the Apple iPod and Microsoft Zune.

Songs cost 89 cents to 99 cents each and albums sell for $5.99 to $9.99.

Two major labels, Universal and EMI, have signed on to sell their music on Amazon, as have thousands of independent labels. ...

Although digital rights management helps to stem illegal copying, it can frustrate listeners by limiting the types of devices or the number of computers on which they can play music. Copy-protected songs sold through iTunes will generally not play on devices other than the iPod, and iPods will not play copy-protected songs bought at rival music stores.

Amazon’s vice president for digital music, Bill Carr, said it would be up to customers to use the music they buy legally.

To help stop music piracy, Mr. Carr said, some record labels add a digital watermark to MP3 files that indicate what company sold the song, and Amazon adds its own name and the item number of the song for customer service purposes. He added that no details about the buyer or the transaction are added to the downloaded music file. ...

Finally, finally, finally, after all these years. Soon, the two remaining music company holdouts will surely follow. I'm checking out Amazon MP3 right now. (But where's the friendly url? They gotta be kidding: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/163856011)