Currently, if you want to purchase music legally, you can use a variety of online music stores from big companies like Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, etc. The modus operandi of these sites is pretty much the same. You can either buy an individual song or pay for the entire album.
Now imagine this scenario: what if you paid a yearly or monthly fee to an online store and in return you could download an unlimited number of songs. Not only that but these songs would be DRM-free so you only need to download a song once and you can play it anywhere you want and burn it to a CD multiple times.
A service like this is in the works from a site called Datz Music Lounge. Datz claims to offer unlimited music downloads in mp3 format for just 100 Pounds a year. That works out to around $160, based on the current exchange rate. As far as offers go, this sounds pretty good.
It’s not all hunky dory though. For starters, you need to be a United Kingdom resident to use the service. Other caveats are that you’ll have to have a special USB drive with the Datz software on it plus the software will work only on Windows for now. In addition, the site is currently only offering music from the Warner Music Group and EMI catalogues.
While on the surface of things it appears as if this is a win-win situation, I wonder how many people would be willing to pony up such a big amount as an advance payment. Also, with the plethora of free music sources available, does someone really need to buy music?
What do you think of the Datz Music Lounge concept? Are you in favor or against these kinds of services? How much money do you normally spend on purchasing music? Let me know in the comments.
Via Mediamemo
Download Unlimited Music for a Flat Fee
Tags: Datz, drm-free, iPod, online music store
