News

Universal to go ... well, universal

As is becoming common knowledge in the general blogsphere, Universal Music has decided to join the bandwagon of online sale of downloadable mp3 music without digital rights management (drm) attached. One could claim that by doing this, Universal lives up to it's name, seeing that drm usually restricts the purchased files to be played on one type of player. By going drm-free, the files sold by Universal will now be useable, well, universally on all players that will accept mp3 files as such. That virtually means all players available at all.

Universal starts out by releasing songs from a range of it's top sellers through a range of popular genres as an experiment. The sales will run from later this month till January 2008, and according to Universal itself, the experiment will be used to evaluate aspects such as user demand and piracy.

The files will be available through a host of online retailers, such as Amazon, Walmart and Puretracks. Notably, iTunes Music Store will not be selling these tracks. One can only speculate if excluding the markets leading online music store will make the experiment fruitful.

LInks:
The story from Universal Music.

As mentioned, the story is all over the web. Find some of the blurb on Google.