Amazon to Add MP3 Store to International Sites

Amazon.com will start selling MP3 music files through its international Web sites this year, the company said Sunday. But details of the company's plans to expand its digital music service remain scarce.

"We have received thousands of e-mails from Amazon customers around the world asking us when we will make Amazon MP3 available outside of the U.S.," Bill Carr, Amazon's vice president of digital music, in a statement.

Amazon began selling MP3 files without digital rights management technology on its U.S. Web site in September 2007, at prices ranging from US$0.89 to $0.99 per song, and $5.99 to $9.99 per album. The company's catalog includes 3.3 million songs from 270,000 artists, it said.

Details of Amazon's plans to expand sales of MP3 into markets outside the U.S. remain unclear. The company did not say when this year it would start selling MP3 music files outside of the U.S., and did not specify whether the service would be available in all countries where Amazon operates.

Besides the U.S., Amazon has online stores in the U.K., Germany, Japan, France, Canada, and China.