Universal Bypasses Apple to Sell Unrestricted Songs Online
Universal, the world’s largest music company, is bypassing the iPod maker, Apple Computers, to sell songs in an unrestricted digital format online through music stores such as Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Google, and Amazon.com. Hopefully, this will be the first of many moves to lead to more widespread “unrestricted” music distribution.
During its trial run, the Vivendi subsidiary said it will make “thousands” of its albums and songs available for download without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, restrictions, to observe consumer demand, price sensitivity and the impact on piracy. The songs will be sold in the MP3 format, which can be played on any handheld music player, including the market-leading iPod from Apple as well as on any cell phone that can play music. The test run will begin Aug. 21 and will run through the end of January.
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