WARNER MUSIC and 7Digital announced yesterday that they have teamed up, to allow customers in the UK, Ireland, Spain, France and Germany to download music free of Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems. The duo is also working together to offer digital album bundles.

The move is quite a kick in the teeth for Apple's Itunes, as the DRM free MP3's can be played on almost all digital devices including the iPod. The move makes UK-based music download site 7 Digital the first major European download source offering Warner Music and EMI tracks in the MP3 file format. They are also rumoured to be in discussions with Sony BMG and Universal.

In the US, Warner Music has a deal with Amazon to sell song tracks in MP3 DRM free format, but Amazon only makes these downloads available in America for the time being, with no firm commitment as to when they would go global. Looks like 7digital has beaten them to it, in Europe at least.

Ben Drury, 7digital's CEO, said: "The addition of Warner Music's MP3 catalogue means that over 80 per cent of 7digital.com's 3.5 million track catalogue is now DRM-free." The online music service hopes to make its entire music catalogue available in DRM-free, high-quality MP3 format by summer 2008.

ITunes currently dominates the music download scene, despite the fact that its AAC-encoding prevents downloads from being played on anything other than an Ipod. Itunes Plus, which does offer some DRM free music, only offers tracks by music company EMI. µ