After Apple, now Microsoft set to go for DRM-free Songs

Following its arch-rival Apple Inc.’s plan to deliver higher quality DRM-Free Music on the iTunes Store, software giant Microsoft has planned to sell digital music online without digital rights management (DRM) protection through its Zune platform.

In an interview, Jason Reindorp, head of marketing for Zune, indicated that Microsoft will sell DRM free songs via Zune, Microsoft's digital portable media player which is also associated with the online music store, introduced more than five years after Apple’s iPod.

“We've been saying for a while that we are aware that consumers want to have unprotected content,” Reindorp said.

Microsoft’s announcement comes merely days after Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs announced their deal to sell unprotected content from recording company EMI Group PLC.

Apple on Monday (April 2, 2007) announced that British music giant EMI Music’s entire digital catalog of music will be available for purchase DRM-free (without digital rights management) from the iTunes Store worldwide in May.

On the same day, EMI Group announced it would start selling much of its music without anti-copying software. Announcing its deal with Apple Inc. the third-largest recording company said it would sell songs through Apple's iTunes store beginning next month and possibly later through other online outlets.

DRM removed tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality similar to the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. Moreover, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song.

"The EMI announcement on Monday was not exclusive to Apple," said Katy Asher, a Microsoft spokeswoman on the Zune team, today in an e-mail. She further said besides EMI, Microsoft has been talking with other record labels "for some time now" about offering DRM-free music on its Zune players as part of its attempt to meet the needs of its customers.

However, music label EMI declined to comment a possible deal with Microsoft still it confirmed that the two companies are negotiating. Zune Marketplace, Microsoft’s online service that integrates with the Zune player, already offers music from EMI.

Besides plans to lift copy protection from music sold on Zune Marketplace, Microsoft has also decided to don Zune with two new colors, "pink" and "watermelon red", with aims to highlight Zune as a fashion brand as well as an entertainment brand.

The current 30-gigabyte hard drive Zune player retails for US$249.99. The Redmond giant will also focus on adding features to Zune Marketplace to stay ahead in competition with Apple.

The portable music player managed to grab 9% market share since its launch, making it the second most important MP3 player, but far behind Apple’s revolutionary iPod.