Datz makes downloading unlimited DRM free music hard

31. Oct, 2008 Comments Off

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Comment: Datz music lounge has come out for Xmas in the UK with a £99.99 unlimited music DRM free offer. So whats the hooks … plenty even before you get going.

So Datz announced unlimited DRM Free music downloads (legally) this week … the service has an upfront fee of £99.99 – probably too steep for most people to consider – but maybe Sainsburys thinks it will be a last minute stocking stuffer.

The service currently has content from Warner, EMI, Beggars and the Orchard – around 2million tracks says the annoucement. The website makes it impossible to search and when we checked Madonna there were 16 versions of her single 4 Minutes. So no filtering of duplicate tracks. We found 6 versions of Katy Perrys first single of 12 tracks from that artist.

Finally the T&C’s would indicate the DRM free tracks are watermarked … if you are caught sharing content your account will be cancelled. Worse still, while the tracks might be DRM Free the download software isn’t. The software can only be used on 2 PC’s; which makes sense (Apple limits to a maximum of 5 PCs in its DRM domain management), but users have to have a USB ’security dongle’ which seems to me to be more like a secure login RSA key — why the complexity for a consumer product?

I hope I get one for Christmas!

Source: Music Week and Datz.com