Vodafone ditches DRM

 

Gallery

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 12 Mar 2009 at 11:23

Vodafone has announced that it will strip the DRM from tracks sold through its music shop beginning this summer.

The company has agreements with three of the big four music labels including Universal Music Group, Sony, and EMI, though talks with Warner are apparently ongoing.

Vodafone claims its store, powered by RealNetworks, offers a million tracks from artists such as Coldplay, Duffy and Lily Allen.

Tracks are available for a £1 with albums offered for £6. The prices suffer next to Amazon's MP3 music shop, which tends to offer tracks for 79 pence or lower and albums for around £3.

Vodafone does offer discounts though, allowing users to buy tracks for 50 pence if they commit to buying 15. Anybody who's already bought DRM-laden tracks from Vodafone will be offered the chance to upgrade to an MP3 version when the service becomes available.

Vodafone follows Amazon, 7Digital and, more recently, iTunes in offering DRM-free tracks, leaving only a handful of major services - most notably Nokia's Comes With Music - as proponents of restricted music. However, Nokia recently announced that DRM free music was on its roadmap for the service.