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With the announcement that Sony BMG had finally signed on the dotted line, 7Digital has become the first UK company to sign up the big four music companies, including Warner Bros, Universal and EMI to MP3 distribution, allowing it to offer a catalogue of around four million 320kb/sec tracks.

The company is also promising that any customer who has already purchased music in the WMA format will be

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able to upgrade to MP3 for free, with emails explaining the process to be sent out within the next few weeks.

To sweeten the deal 7digital is also offering existing and new customers two free MP3 albums, the first a compilation of EMI tracks and the second a selection of acts from 7digital's indie store. Tracklists have yet to be confirmed.

The deal represents a major coup for the UK company, especially given iTunes currently only offers unprotected tracks from EMI.

It also places 7Digital in a strong position to face Amazon's MP3 store, which offers music from all four major labels and is expected to open in the UK by the end of the year.

"Consumers see DRM as somewhat of a hindrance when purchasing legal digital music," says Ben Drury, CEO of 7digital.com. "The availability of all of the big four music labels in high-quality MP3 is fantastic news for the UK music fan... we've seen a huge increase in sales since making MP3 downloads available on 7digital.com."