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Many will say it was long over due, but the recording industry’s fourth and largest giant, Sony BMG has finally realized that DRM (Digital Rights Management) music in the Information Age isn’t worth the hassle, reports BusinessWeek. The industry has been at war with illegal downloads (beginning with the infamous Napster) and continuing with its successors over the years.

This announcement, though not yet made officially, also comes with another deal breaker: Sony will release free downloads of several of its albums during the Super Bowl spearheaded by Justin Timberlake, an artist contracted to the label.

Sony’s abrupt shift in stance coming after the rest of the industry had not only put aside the rights management hassle but  aligned itself with the fact that no matter how hard they tried, people would still find a way around the problem, ala P2P sharing. They might as well get a slice of the pie, right?

Things are going good for Sony lately: with Warner Bros. now accepting the Blu Ray disc standard and the fact that it had the added foresight to package it into its PlayStation 3 gaming console is only icing to its layered cake.

With the fourth of the Big Four labels joining the DRM-free zone, what does this mean for the industry? In specific, what does this mean for Apple’s iPod and iTunes? Enter Amazon. Whereas Apple only instituted a standard 99c fee across any and all albums, labels and artists, Amazon has allowed some measure of control to the companies to shift their pricing policies according to their marketing needs. Rumor has it, the Big Four weren’t exactly pleased with Apple’s pricing, grumbling that it was on the low side, and not enough of a differentiating factor for new artists. Besides, it’s own DRM licensing software didn’t allow the tunes downloaded into iTunes to be playable on any other player, thus limiting the control and marketability even further. With Amazon and its diverse file formats, not only will iPods the world over benefit with .mp3 extensions, so too will every other player out there.

Will this significantly affect Apple’s market share? Not really. Apple can rely both on its reputation and the fact that it’s been out there for a longer period of time and even if Amazon and the music industry take rapid strides in this field, it still won’t be enough to get a leg up on Apple.

And of course, this opens up all sorts of options for consumers who can now choose between what services they subscribe to and how much they’re willing to pay to stock up their players. There is, however, an advantage for Sony’s BMG over iTunes–more songs–including all past material, up for download. Anyone who’s tried downloading classics will realize that they are an increasingly rare breed and difficult to find especially if you’d rather not risk the hazards of P2P software. With BMG unlocking its library of past albums, artists and songs under their agreement with Amazon, chances are they will see an increase in pie share.

But whether it will still be enough of a ‘competition’, remains to be seen.

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