Jobs’ dream of a DRM Free music world could soon become a reality, as Business Week reported that Sony BMG is considering ditching DRM for its music catalog.

Digital rights management schemes, such as Apple's FairPlay technology or Microsoft’s Certified for Vista, limit how many times users can copy their music and which devices they can play them on.

Last year, in February, in an already famous open letter entitled "Thoughts on Music", Steve Jobs shared his vision about music and DRM. “Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music, which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat,” wrote Jobs at the time.

Jobs explained: “DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy”. In Jobs’ opinion by requesting that their songs to be sold online only protected with DRMs, the big four music companies, Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI, are making a big mistake.

One year has passed by since Jobs letter, and now Sony BMG is the last company that has not still drop the DRM. EMI was the first company to offer its music as DRM free downloads, and it was soon joined by Universal Music, and in December last year by Warner Music Group.

In a memo to the employees, Edgar Bronfman, the chief executive of Warner Music, explained the company’s decision.

“Consumers want flexibility with respect to what they can do with music once they purchase it, and we want them to have that flexibility. Giving consumers the assurance that the music they purchase can be played on any device they own-the assurance of interoperability-will only encourage more sales of music,” he wrote.

According to Business Week, Sony BMG could soon join the DRM Free bandwagon, but it still unclear if the company will sell all tracks from its music catalog as DRM free songs or just some tunes.

Despite various reports that Sony BMG would join Amazon MP3 store, nothing is clear, and Amazon officials declined to comment on the rumor.

What are the consequences of a DRM-free world? First, it is very clear that other music companies will follow the big four’s example and will start to sell their music as DRM-free tracks.

Also, if Sony BMG will indeed join Amazon MP3 store, than Amazon’ music initiative has a good chance to become iTunes main competitor. Amazon’s music store has managed to gather under its umbrella, the catalogs of all the three labels Universal Music, EMI and Warner Music, who decided to offer their tracks as DRM free songs.

Amazon MP3 now offers a wide selection of a la carte DRM-free MP3 music downloads with more than 2.9 million songs from over 33,000 record labels.

On the other hand a world in which the consumers will be able to download their music without being tied up to a certain MP3 player will surely boost the sales of digital players. Microsoft’s Zune could be the first music player to benefit from this move to a DRM-free world.

Although Microsoft has developed its own DRM technologies, Bill Gates has said in the past that the current DRM technologies are too complicated for regular users and they are better off purchasing music CDs and ripping the music from them for listening on computers and portable music players. Gates noted that the DRM is not an effective solution. Therefore, it is very likely that Microsoft will encourage the move towards a DRM-free world. The iPod users could also benefit from this trend, as they will be capable to download music from other stores as well.

Overall, the DRM free world could hurt the iTunes sales and boost the MP3 players’ sales, but it is very unlikely that Apple will not react to this situation. For the moment, only EMI is selling DRM-free songs on iTunes. When Universal Music announced it will sell DRM-free songs, the company’s spokesman Peter LoFrumento explained that UMG isn't selling DRM-free tracks on iTunes for now so it could use the Apple store as a control group for measuring the impact on pricing, piracy and sales.

So far, only one thing is certain: if Sony BMG will start to offer free tracks, DRM days are over. Let’s wait and see what will happen!