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British label starts selling DRM-free MP3s

15 January 2004 15:41 by Petteri "dRD" Pyyny | 3 comments

British indie record label, Warp Records, has broken the ranks of music industry by dropping the idea of DRM restrictions on digitally sold music. Typically online music stores like iTunes have DRM restrictions on music which means that you can't transfer the tracks freely to anywhere you want and with majority of stores, you can't burn the tracks without paying a separate fee for that right.

Warp Records is the home for various well-known indie artists, including Aphex Twin. Company sells the MP3 tracks via its own web store for $1.39 per track, which is $0.40 higher than the "industry average" set by iTunes for DRM-restricted tracks.

War Records' FAQ states "At the moment labels have skirted around the whole issue of making their catalogue available, often introducing various poorly-supported formats and DRM (digital rights management) complications in the process. We wanted to be the first to take a big step in what we believe is a positive direction, and see what happens".

More information:

The Register
Warp Records

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pbailey (Member) 15 January 2004 18:01
Good on 'em, i think it's great they take a risk to see what happens. I personally don't want to get involved in the ugly mess of a beast that online music has become, so i'll just keep enjoying my free rights as an Australian and keep downloading that music from peer to peer. As a side note for the last year i've been converting my music collection to my hdd and it's now over 40 gig (unshared mind you) forget how many thousands of songs that is, but believe you me, if i could remember i'd be telling you all about, lol. ;) Bailey [ + quote]
Nephilim (Moderator) 15 January 2004 18:45
Wow. A record label with a brain. Who would've thought. [ + quote]
cleft (Junior Member) 15 January 2004 19:48
Maybe they are trying to avoid the Belgium consumer group who were to take the some of the major labels to court over defective products, caused by the copy protection not allowing the cd to play in all cd players. Whatever the reason, it is about time someone offered their music without the buyer having to try and figure out if it is going to work or not. Like the original poster here, I have been slowly working on converting my collection to mp3's. The reel to reels take a while to convert but there is one thing about them, guarrenty there is no protection on them as almost every one of them came from a record. [ + quote]