Thoughts on Play.com offering DRM free music

 Play.com have started a new music download service in the UK offering DRM free music. Being a frequent Play.com customer I headed on over to their website to see how things compared to iTunes. 

Good points:

- the music is good old MP3 format and therefore should play on almost anything

- the bitrate is glorious 320kps

- its encoded using the fantastic LAME encoder 

- no DRM!!! pay your money, download your music - no mucking around

- everything appears to be cheaper than iTunes 

Bad points

- only (!) a million tunes but more on the way...

- not as convenient as iTunes

Well done Play.com! that's how to run an online music store. From now on I will be checking Play.com before buying on iTunes.

Now lets see what Amazon has in store for the UK with their DRM free music store due later in the year. It seems the music industry is starting to understand what customers want and ready to provide.