Amazon has announced that it will sell digital music without the controversial DRM copyright technology later this year.

The company aims to open a digital music store in a few months that will sell millions of songs in DRM-free format from 12,000 record labels. This is good news for consumers, who will be able to burn them to CDs or transfer them easily between different types of music players or computers. Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology was introduced to prevent piracy but prevents people from doing what they like with the downloaded music they have paid for.

Amazon will be dipping into the vast stores of record label EMI, which recently became the first of the ‘Big 5’ record labels to dump copyright – albeit for a small price through Apple’s iTunes.

“Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device," said Jeff Bezos [pictured], Amazon.com founder and CEO. “We're excited to have EMI joining us in this effort and look forward to offering our customers MP3s from amazing artists like Coldplay, Norah Jones and Joss Stone.”

“Amazon has been an important retail partner of ours, and we are delighted they will be offering consumers EMI's new premium DRM-free downloads in their new digital music store.”

The arrival of heavy-hitter Amazon to the DRM-free camp is a big boost and may, hopefully, force the other major music labels to start offering some form of DRM-free music downloads.

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