DIGITAL: MAJOR CHANGES.

eMusic has sealed its first deal with a major label - Sony Music - which will supply DRM-free content to the music service in the US. With other majors tipped to follow Sony onto the consumer site, could we be entering the final chapter in the story of digital rights management?

By Eamonn Forde

AFTER A DECADE IN THE MARKET, DRM-free download subscription service eMusic has reached a historic landmark by securing its first content from a major label.

But Sony Music Entertainment's deal with the online retailer contains a twist: only recordings that are two years or older will be available, for now.

Initially covering the US only, the deal with Sony contributes to the growing sense that DRM is becoming an anachronism. From its launch, eMusic had always pushed the MP3 format free of restrictions and this proved a barrier for the majors to license content. But when EMI broke from the pack in 2007 to sell DRM-free tracks via iTunes, it sparked a series of DRM-free experimentation across the business.

Universal, for example, used specific releases in France as a test bed, while Warner Music - previously the biggest DRM supporter of all the majors - slowly began to come round to the idea. Last year saw all the majors begin stripping DRM from the tracks they already sold via a number of retailers. Indeed, 7Digital was the first service to license content stripped of DRM from all four majors across Europe last summer. This was quickly followed by the big four licensing to Amazon MP3 in the UK, having already signed up in the US at the start of 2008.

Chief executive of eMusic Danny Stein says the service had been in talks with the majors to license content as far back as 2003, but DRM was the insurmountable obstacle until now. "The conversations with the majors were not very earnest until 2007 when EMI started to sell music stripped of DRM through iTunes," he says.