Devoted to show business and the entertainment industry

Sony BMG (SNE) has become the last of the  major music labels to commit to offering digital music downloads without digital rights management (DRM). Warner Music Group (WMG), EMI and Vivendi's Universal Music Group had already made that decision.

This move was inevitable and way past the time it should have been done. DRM didn't do much to keep file sharers from continuing to download, and it hurt those who were paying customers much more than it did anyone else, by forcing them to copy music to a CD and then upload it to be able to play it on their chosen device. The music suffered in quality as a result, and it created a lot of bad will toward the industry.

What this move will ultimately do, is provide a lot more flexibility for consumers and the music companies themselves. Now hopefully instead of trying to save a dying business model, they will focus on ways to increase their music sales. If they don't do that, this move won't make any sense to them.

One thing already being attempted is to encourage the emergance of more competition by working with Amazon (AMZN) to be the first company to offer DRM-free music with all four major labels. Apple (AAPL) iTunes of course is pretty much calling the digital music shots at this time.

Another possibility would be to develop interesting ways to consume and work with music across the social networking web sites.

Either way, this should give the industry the much needed room to maneuver they didn't have when attempting to slow down where the industry was headed. It should also help them build bridges between consumers and themselves which have been left with a bad taste in their mouths for a number of years.