MSN launches UK mobile music store… with DRM
Microsoft has announced the launch of MSN Mobile Music, a store sitting on its MSN Mobile portal selling full-track music downloads, realtones and music videos.
The store launches today, and is being run for MSN by VidZone Digital Media. It’s got licences with Sony Music, EMI and Warner Music Group (but not, it seems, Universal Music Group). It’s kicking off with up to one million tracks, 25,000 tones and 10,000 videos.
The mobile store uses the UK PayForIt billing system, charging users on their mobile bills. Full-tracks will cost £1.50, realtones will cost £3 (!) and videos will cost £2. It’ll work with more than 130 handsets from day one, and can be accessed in the UK by texting MSN to the shortcode 63463, or by pointing your mobile browser to www.msn.co.uk.
The press release doesn’t mention what format the full-tracks are in, so we’ve just visited the site to check. They aren’t DRM-free: under the Usage Rights section of the Help area, you’re told “When you purchase the music, you get unlimited plays for the content whilst it remains on the device. At this stage, you cannot transfer your music to another device or PC.”
In other words, for anyone buying from the store, their music won’t be playable after their next handset upgrade, and can only be played on a home hi-fi if the mobile handset is plugged into it as the source. When DRM-free tracks are available for less than £1 on various web stores, it’s hard to see MSN Mobile Music catching on.
Tags: microsoft, MSN Mobile Music
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