Amazon Announces DRM-Free MP3 Store

We’ve got some big news in the digital music world this morning.

In one of the longest-running rumors in the online music realm, Amazon.com has officially (and finally) announced that it will open a digital music store. The store will include EMI’s entire catalog and 12,000 other record labels, available as MP3s, all without that pesky DRM that everyone’s been arguing about for years.

While eMusic has been in the MP3 game for quite some time, this is significant because it is such a large online player offering the entire catalog of a major label without copy-restrictions. General competition is good, but having more online offerings for music sans restrictions is even better. What remains to be seen is whether the DRM-free model will ultimately help the overall bottom line. It has certainly worked on me (I’m still an eMusic subsrciber and rare user of the iTunes Music Store).

For more details and some exclusive information on timing and pricing, check out Hypebot‘s post on the subject.