Major Labels Crawl Towards MP3's

We've been saying it for weeks, but now word is coming out of  France at the industry gathering MIDEM that 2007 will be the year that the majors seriously experiment with DRM free MP3's.

The International Herald Tribune reports that "executives of several technology companies...said this weekend that a move toward the sale of unrestricted digital files in the MP3 format from at least one of the four major record companies could come within months." We predict that the major will be EMI with a catalog offering.  Express your opinion with a vote in our poll in the right hand column.

Further confirmation comes from "music executives, (who) while saying that timetable was self-serving on the part of technology companies that would benefit from the change, nevertheless acknowledged that the debate was front and center".

The indies have once again paved the way with successful DRM free offerings via eMusic, InSound, 7Digital and more; and the Amazon DRM free store is sill moving forward. Will that be where the real DRM free experimentation begins?