Universal’s DRM-Free Experiment: No To iTunes And Zune, Yes To Still-Nonexistent Amazon Store

Universal Music Group announced that it will experiment with DRM-free music, offering songs that are free from copy protection between Aug. 21 and Jan. 31. UMG is planning to hawk its DRM-free wares, which will be available in a variety of bitrates and formats, at a bunch of non-iTunes digital-music outlets, including the coming-any-day-now Amazon music store and the “social commerce widget for gift-giving online” (whew!) gBox, which will have IE/Windows users driven its way by Google AdWords^*.

Another store that’s missing from the laundry list being recited by business reporters this morning (Amazon, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Rhapsody, Transworld, PassAlong Networks, Puretracks, gBox): the Zune Marketplace, which seems like an even more curious omission, given that UMG has a stake in keeping sales of the Zune afloat. (It’s certainly more mystifying than the iTunes snub, which is no doubt an extension of the tussle the two companies have had over pricing.) Anyone want to guess why they weren’t included in this restriction-free party?

UMG Ramps Up DRM-Free Testing [Billboard.biz]

^* We got confused by the stories that listed “Google” as a retail partner; we’re guessing that was actually a reference to gBox that got truncated in editing.