Digital Home Thoughts: Yahoo To Join the DRM-free MP3 Party

"Yahoo Music general manager Ian Rogers has long been lobbying the music industry to drop DRM. Yahoo was one of the first to begin testing sales of DRM-free MP3s in December of 2006, when it started selling unprotected tracks from EMI. Since then, the DRM-free music biz has exploded, with DRM-free offerings found through iTunes, Amie Street, Amazon, eMusic, magnatune, PureTracks, and 7digital. But none of them (save Amazon) have DRM-free music available from nearly all major artists, leaving Amazon as the place to go for the widest selection of unprotected music. Until Yahoo joins the party, that is. Yahoo has the potential to wrangle the Big Four into a deal and become the second major music store to offer DRM-free music from them all (plus, undoubtedly, a smattering of independent labels as the others already do). Why Yahoo and not the others? Because, save for iTunes, the other music stores are either not very interested in big music, or just plain aren't very big (eMusic is a decent size, but focuses mostly on indie labels). The music labels are also still holding out on iTunes a bit to get back at Apple for holding the keys to the castle for so long. So who's left? Yahoo and Amazon."

I'm happy about the level of competition that Yahoo will bring to the game even though I think Amazon has the advantage. Why you may ask? First off Amazon is a retailer first and foremost. Sure Yahoo has shopping but I bet nearly every visitor to this site already has an account with Amazon, while I bet less than half have ever bought anything through Yahoo shopping. Second, Amazon already sells LOTS of CDs. I'm sure this gives them clout with the labels. Plus it gives them the ability to leverage their sizable customer database for recommendations and such.