Sony BMG Will Bail on DRM

Sony BMG will begin offering at least part of its music catalogue online without restrictive digital rights management mechanisms, Business Week reports. The decision comes after the other three major labels—Warner, EMI, and Universal—decided to ditch DRM in 2007, challenging Apple's 80% share of the legal music downloads market.

Like Warner's, Sony BMG’s titles will be sold through Amazon’s digital music store, and can be freely burned and copied by buyers. Sony BMG has already experimented with DRM-free music sales for low-selling artists. "A lot of these tests have led people to believe that maybe this works," said a Sony BMG exec. (More Sony BMG stories.)