Sony BMG will start selling music downloads free of copy-protection safeguards later this month in North America, as the last holdout among the major record labels succumbed to the growing trend.
Sony BMG Music Entertainment said in a statement that some digital albums will become available through a new download service called Platinum MusicPass starting Jan. 15 in the United States and late January in Canada.
A Sony Corp. official in Tokyo confirmed the shift to the MP3 format in the U.S. but said similar moves aren't in the works elsewhere.
Music files in the MP3 format can be copied to computers and burned onto CDs without restriction. They can also be played on most digital music players, including Apple Inc.'s iPod, as well as on personal computers.
As an electronics maker that also has major entertainment businesses, including its music joint venture with Bertelsmann AG, Sony has long resisted the global MP3 trend.
Sony had stuck to what the industry calls Digital Rights Management, which uses software coding to prevent copying downloaded tunes by making some songs incompatible with certain digital players.
But CD sales around the world have been on the slide as more people opt to buy their music online, such as at Apple's iTunes Music Store.
Sony BMG's MusicPass will offer 37 titles at first, including rock, pop and other genres, according to the company. But people must first buy a card available at 4,500 retail outlets across the U.S., including Best Buy, Target and others, it said.