Aiming to keep its lead in the music retail market, Wal-Mart is launching DRM free MP3 music downloads at Walmart.com for 94 cents per track and $9.22 per album. The uber retailer's music catalog offers digital tracks from major record labels EMI and Universal. The new MP3 format allows customers to play music on most devices, including the ubiquitous iPod, iPhone and Zune players.

Universal followed EMI in announcing DRM free music to major retailers but bypassed iTunes, which is in third place behind Best Buy's second in the music retail market line-up. This is a good move for consumers, allowing competition and hopefully provide more options for the digital music buying public.

DRM free allows users the ability to play songs on any device without copyright protection software, which not only limits unauthorized copying of songs, but on which devices the songs can be played as well.

Sorry, Mac, and Linux users, no rollback for you - only Window's 2000, XP and Vista are supported.

Over the past few years mega coffee chain Starbucks has been active in selling music CDs through its stores worldwide, making the most of the promotional value of the association between its stores and music - and now it appears that Burger King wants to get into action too. Burger King has sealed a promotional deal with EMI that will see its Whopper munching customers in the United Kingdom receiving free and DRM-free downloads from artists such as Iron Maiden, Robbie Williams and Corinne Bailey Rae.

The codes will allow BK customers to download free sample DRM-free MP3 tracks from a BK branded microsite that will allow consumers to try out and download tracks from a variety of EMI artists. The promotion is the first launched through a collaboration between EMI and consumer marketing company VerveLife. So next time you go for a burger make sure you pack your iPod.

While the recording industry may be in the doghouse, that hasn't stopped Japanese pop princess Utada Hikaru from claiming a new record for the most digital downloads in the world with her latest single 'Flavor of Life'. Hikaru has managed over 7 million downloads across all formats since February, which isn't bad going especially seeing as that it's unlikely that many people outside of Japan would be able to point her out in a police lineup, let alone buy her single.

While the figures may be impressive, the metrics for this record are a little hazy, included are all digital products including mobile downloads, ringtones, Internet downloads, video clip downloads and ringback tones, giving the smiley pop star a bit of an edge in the race for the download record. Hikaru also was also helped along towards the record by releasing two separate mixes of the track.

The record is also contentious because there aren't really any industry standard metrics for measuring the success of downloads and reporting in other countries has varied greatly. Record label EMI points out that Akon's 'Smack That' managed 2.1 million downloads and that the top selling download track in the US has been Daniel Powter's 'Bad Day'.

Of course this news could just be a well timed effort to show that EMI's digital strategy and recent move to abandon DRM is paying off - at a point when the Major label is shopping for a new owner.

Or it could just mean that the Japanese really really really love that song.

If absolute privacy is a concern critics are voicing against Apple's latest move with DRM-less tracks from EMI, they should have filed their complaints over four years ago when the iTunes Store first opened.

As the story goes, many users and industry pundits have announced their disappointment with the discovery that DRM-less iTunes Store tracks contain the owner's name and email address embedded in the file. Even Cory Doctorow and his merry band of EFF compatriots have added their ubiquitous $.0.02 to the mix, calling this an a privacy blunder on Apple's part. A key example cited for how bad this perceived breach of privacy can get is the theft of an iPod: if someone steals your DMP (iPod or otherwise, if you consider the fact that DRM-less iTunes Store tracks will play on any AAC-enabled device, including the Zune now), they could easily check through your files to scrape out your name and email address from any of the new DRM-less tracks. Fortunately, Geeks R Us nails the problem with this line of thinking in this So What post: "Apple embedded your personal information in content that only you should have is no different than them saving your email address in a Mail application preferences." If a thief stole a typical computer user's notebook - Mac, Windows or otherwise - they would easily have full access to quite a bit more information than the owner's name and email address. So why haven't Cory and his fellow perpetual protesters spoken out against this egregious privacy flaw in the wider scope of computing?

The fault with these complaints against Apple's latest non-DRM move runs more than skin deep, however, as this embedding of personal information didn't merely begin last week. Since the first day it was opened over four years ago, the iTunes Store has embedded an owner's email address in purchased files. You can easily verify this by importing a non-EMI iTunes Store track from a friend - iTunes will immediately notify you that your machine must be authorized to play the track, prompting you with a dialog requesting a password and the email address of the file's owner already filled in.

Watch out Cory - all your email addresses are belong to anyone who steals your iTunes Store files; just as they have been for the last four years.

The moral of the story is the same as ever, only a few of the details change this time around: While Apple certainly isn't the first to offer a DRM-free commercial digital download service (In the mainstream that title probably goes to eMusic), they are the first of the major services to take the leap of faith and offer a premium music catalog completely free of DRM. In all likelihood, if you aren't sharing your personally identifiable files over P2P networks, you don't have anything to worry about, and an email address is the last thing you have to fret over if someone steals your iPod. The thief is after your DMP because they want your gadget, not because they want to email you a great offer on viagra.

There is no more of a privacy issue with iTunes Store files (non-DRM or otherwise) than there is with the theft of your computer or mobile phone. Files bought from the store are supposed to remain just as private as the personal information embedded in them. Now, can we all go back to buying high quality, DRM free tracks - and not vindicating the RIAA by sharing them - so more record labels finally invest in DRM-free digital distribution channels like we've been asking for?

It looks like Apple is prepared to start selling DRM-free music from EMI this afternoon. We've known this day was coming, but yesterday Apple released iTunes 7.2 with support for "iTunes Plus," which seems to be Apple's name for unencrypted music.

A quick refresher course. DRM-free tracks will be available for $1.29, or $.30 more than tracks with Apple's Fair Play copy protection. While the ability to play the files on any device you choose is probably worth the extra cost, the songs will also be encoded at 256kbps, compared with 128kbps for the encrypted $.99 songs.

Apple is also expanding its iTunes U service, making university lectures available to the public for free.

[via tuaw]

Apple is set to begin selling DRM-free music from EMI starting in May. But it looks like Amazon is gunning to be the first major company to sell those sweet DRM-free tunes.

There've been rumors that Amazon could be entering the digital music store game for months now. Now it looks like the company's been in talks every major record label, possibly in a rush to get a store up and running in the next few weeks.

Amazon is hoping to sell unencrypted music, and will likely partner with record label EMI, which has already signed an arrangement with Apple. There could also be some classical tracks available from Universal Music Group.

[via Ars Technica]

Not content to just follow Apple into the portable music market with the Zune, Microsoft appears poised to follow Apple into the DRM-free music market.

Music label has already agreed to sell unencrypted high quality digital audio files through Apple's iTunes Music Store. Zune marketing director Jason Reindorp told CNet that Microsoft plans to follow suit, offering DRM-free versions of EMI music.

There's no word on when the unencrypted tracks might hit Zune Marketplace, or how much they'll cost. Apple is charging a little more for unencrypted tracks, at $1.29 per track, compared with $.99 for AAC files with DRM.

In February Steve Jobs told the world that he thought it was time to get rid of DRM and now two months later word on the street is that Steve Jobs plans on selling songs owned by London based EMI on iTunes DRM free.

If it happens, this could be the beginning of the end for DRM if other record companies follow suit and offer up their tunes DRM free as well. Jobs will reportedly make an announcement about a "new digital offering" at EMI's London headquarters this morning. The announcement was originally rumored to be the addition of the previously unavailable Beatles catalog on iTunes but has later been confirmed by the Wall Street Journal as an announcement of DRM-free music on iTunes. You can hear everything first hand from Job's himself by listening live to a webcast of the press conference on EMI's website at 8am EST.

[Via MarketWatch]

I need to know something. You are the only one who can help me here. Why? Because I need your opinion on something. I already have my own opinion, so it is no use asking myself about it, I already know. Let's say someone was offering you free music, and you could download it legally, but the catch is that you would have to watch a 90 second ad clip before you could download the song. Would you do it? Just once or all the time, every day? Would you get sick of the ads in a month?I guess what I am asking is this: will ad-based downloads be worth it to the downloader. SpiralFrog thinks you will want to watch these ads to get free music. They think 90 seconds isn't too long to make someone wait for a tune, is it? Will ad-supported music downloads be hot or not? I am not so sure it will work the way they plan, but it could be a big hit, it is hard to say at this point. What do you think?

[Via The Age]

This week record label EMI signed a deal with SpiralFrog to provide lyrics (ad-supported) from their artists to SpiralFrog users, and allow free access for US residents to the music available from EMI. Good news for listeners, but something I read in the article on USA Today bothered me a bit. It was the statement by Roger Faxon, EMI'ss co-chief executive, that EMI wants to "recapture consumer demand, which has been hijacked by online piracy." He apparently doesn't quite know what he's talking about. Consumer demand is all but gone not because of online piracy, but because recording companies refuse to give consumers what they want. That is what it comes down to, they are inflexible and still producing CDs when the whole consumer population is moving toward using other avenues to get their music. This is the age of convenience, as mentioned in this story, where people bought and downloaded more songs OTA than expected in the UK. UBC Media got an 83% acceptance rate among users, which surprised them, and isn't bad. Like Blockbuster, recording companies need to get with the program, or they will be wiped out in the near future. The companies with the big lead (like Apple, Napster, rhapsody, others) in the digital music arena will not stand still and wait for the others to catch up, they will (and already do) dominate the market, and will continue to do so. EMI and others need to wake up and smell the downloads.