Amazon.com today the company will launch a digital music store later in 2007 with millions of songs, free of copy protection, and said it had already agreed a deal with EMI to sell almost its entire catalogue and that other record companies would follow.

It is the second such deal for EMI, home to artists ranging from Coldplay to Norah Jones to Joss Stone to Pink Floyd, which last month licensed 'unblocked' music to Apple's iTunes store.

EMI also announced today similar deals with VirginMega in France and with various online retailers across Scandinavia.

Amazon founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos said: “Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device.”

Digital Rights Management, or DRM, locks digital tracks so that they can not be copied from mobiles to laptops or to friends' devices.

But critics say it hinders the growth of the legal music market.

Earlier this year, Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and chief executive, called on the world’s four major record companies, including EMI, to start selling songs online without DRM copy-protection software.

Last month, EMI said it would make its music available online without anti-piracy measures, becoming the first major music group to take the risk in a bid to grow digital sales.

The two other publishing giants - Warner Music Group and Vivendi’s Universal Music are still examining whether to follow suit.

Amazon said its music store will include 12,000 music labels but the retailer is only disclosing the partnership with EMI initially. The company declined to comment on whether other major music labels would be participating in the store.

Amazon has not yet determined pricing per song or per album. iTunes charges more for downloads of lock-free music.

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