It looks like Apple and EMI really set the whole thing off. Now Amazon is launching an online music store next month -- and significantly, this one will only sell unprotected music.

This means that you can buy music tracks that play on your phone, on your iPod, on your PC - wherever you want, without having to worry about restrictive "digital rights management" (DRM).

Amazon will likely sell music from EMI as well as from a number of independent labels, according to the Times Online report.

What's interesting about Amazon's planned service, as opposed to, say, Napster, Yahoo, et al. is that Amazon plans on selling tracks in MP3 format. This means that they'll play on Apple iPods and other players from Creative, iriver, and any other company, not to mention any cell phone with music capability.

Good stuff; let's hope it works out for Amazon this time around. (Last time they tried to launch their own music player to compete with the iPod, but talks with the labels broke down and Amazon never released it.)

Amazon set to launch online music store [Times Online via Engadget]