VirginMega France to sell DRM-free MP3s in March
By Darren Murph 
posted Jan 16th 2007 1:35PM
posted Jan 16th 2007 1:35PM
What do you do when a judge slaps down your case and leaves you no hope whatsoever? Apparently, you just do whatever the heck you want, including ditching that whole "DRM" idea altogether. Yep, as shocking as this may sound to we Americans who are essentially forced to juggle some sort of DRM on a daily basis, the French VirginMega store is planning to offer up quite a few (200,000 to be exact) tunes directly through its online music that are devoid of any DRM whatsoever, and moreover, are encoded as 256kbps MP3 files. Of course, we aren't certain if these tracks are on major or indie record labels (aside from V2Music, who has already signed on), but regardless, this is certainly a move that will elicit smiles on those fed up with proprietary formats not playing nice with a wide variety of DAPs. So if you're not too picky on what tunes you listen to, and you're down with supporting DRM-free music regardless of genre, keep an eye out for the new catalog opening up to French users this March.[Via DJing]
I'm not that much of an anti-DRM fanatic, but 256kbps MP3s? Nice. That should be better than Napster's 192kbps WMAs, and DEFINITELY better sounding than Apple's nauseatingly bad 128kbps AACs (CD quality my ass).
Let's just hope that we'll see something similar in the US soon...
FYI, AAC quality is much better than MP3's.
128kbps AAC beats 192kbps MP3.
And Fnac, the largest music store in France will also propose 150000 drm free mp3 tracks.
So am I going to jail if I buy songs from the French Virgin website? 256kbps MP3 is mighty nice.
read drm-less tracks not free as in free beer.
Mp3's will always suck - even at 256kbit. But still this is definitely a step in the right direction. Heads up for ze court of la France :) ... VIVE LA FRANCE!
"Let's just hope that we'll see something similar in the US soon..."
Well there is emusic.com. I'm currently paying $14.99 a month for 50 downloads that are completely DRM free and ripped at 320kbps. Now granted it is all pretty much indie music, but that is all I pretty much listen to.
JD,
In theory, the same argument could be made as the allofmp3.com situation. Regardless of whether THEY are legit or not, the process seems to be perfectly legal. All you are doing is importing music, which as far as I know, is legal.
This already exists here... it's called Magnatune.
"Regardless of whether THEY are legit or not, the process seems to be perfectly legal. All you are doing is importing music, which as far as I know, is legal."
-Ladies and gentlemen... moral relativism.
In all seriousness, if non-French can access the Virgin store, I'm all for it (depending on price). It's DRM-Free, artist sanctioned (ahem, allofmp3) way to get digital music.
Emusic and magnatune are both awesome (and zunior is tremendous), but they both are relatively limited in terms of breadth (they're really strong on depth, though). With the Virgin name, you can probably expect some radio-friendly artists to appear (and maybe even some downright famous ones).
Get an anonymous ip, this will not let store engines your location. You CAN be non french....
Can i point out its 'Virgin Megastore' not Virginmega Store'. Dont know if you have Virgin over in America but just letting you know.
I've been to one and there were NO Virgin's anywhere.
Virgin Megastore decided that they want iPod market anyway :-D
A couple of years ago they were bullying Apple to give them access to FairPlay.
The big question for me is still does "DRM MP3's" equal platform independent? Or will it require some type of Windows-only player/downloader?
Either way it's a step in the right direction.