But will higher sales follow?

Less than a year after eMarketer asked "Is DRM Doomed?," the answer is fast becoming "yes."

As The New York Times reported, Sony is the last of the big four music labels to offer music unrestricted by DRM (Digital Rights Management) for download from Amazon.com.

The move is important for several reasons, but music marketers will likely be most excited by the prospect of a larger online music market.

The problem is not that consumers aren't buying digital music. Indeed, digital track sales grew by 45% last year, according to the Nielsen SoundScan "2007 Year-End Music Industry Report."

Yet digital music sales are not making up for a CD sales slump, and online music consumption will have to be far more widespread than it is today to do so.

eMarketer and other firms have pegged DRM as one of the things keeping consumers from buying more music digitally. Why should consumers buy digital music, the thinking goes, if it lets them do less with their music than a CD, such as load music onto multiple computers and portable devices?

In this light, Amazon has made a bold entry into the music download wars. The company launched Amazon MP3 in September 2007, and already it has brought the largest music labels, which had previously been skittish about parting with DRM, together on the same service.

The move threatens to undermine Apple’s leadership in this area. It had gone essentially unchallenged since the emergence of the iTunes Music Store in 2003.

Read more - eMarketer