Will be a stand-alone website, offering DRM-free MP3s, which will also be accessible from links within the file-sharing software.
Lime Wire LLC, maker of the popular LimeWire file-sharing software, announced today that it will open a digital music store to offer paid digital downloads and monthly streaming subscription plans.
To be called the “LimeWire Store,” it will initially be a stand-alone website that will also be directly accessible from links in the file-sharing software. Subsequent releases will enable users to browse and purchase music directly from within the LimeWire program itself.
Customers will be able to buy songs and albums “a la carte” or as part of monthly subscription plans. Individual track purchases will cost somewhere between 99cents and $1.29, and the price per album and for the monthly subscription plan are as yet to be determined.
What’s most important however, is that music tracks will be sold in a DRM-FREE 256k MP3 format! That’s right DRM-free!
The first music companies to partner in the new digital music store are IRIS Distribution and Nettwerk Productions, both of which have signed deals with LimeWire to provide music from their extensive music catalogs.
IRIS Distribution represents a number of independent artists and labels, and specializes in serving as a “liaison between independent labels and digital music retailers.” Soem of the labesl it reprsenst include: Big Dada, Burning Spear, Chemikal Underground, Duck Down Records, Gemini Sun, Ghostly International, K Records, Kemado, Kranky, Le Tigre, Megaforce, NinjaTune, Palmetto Records, Preservation Hall, Projekt, SCION and Subliminal.
Nettwerk Productions is part of Nettwerk Music Group, Canada’s apparently “leading privately owned record label and artist management company,” that represents artists such as Sarah McLachlan, Avril Lavigne, Barenaked Ladies and many others.
“We are delighted to collaborate with these forward-thinking music companies and sell their authorized content through LimeWire,” said Jesse Rubenfeld, Lime Wire Chief Financial Officer.
Either way, I can’t help but feel a little cynical that this is all just an attempt to get the heat from Congress off their back after recent attempst to try and characterize LimeWire as a so-called “threat to national security.”
This is especially so after Mark Gorton, Chairman of The Lime Group testified that he felt that ISPs in the US should be made to disconnect “users in engaged in illegal behavior who ignore multiple warnings” and that there should be policies in place that ensure “effective enforcement mechanisms to combat illegal behavior on the Internet.” Wouldn’t it be ironic if the onetime “pillar of piracy” became an active champion in the fight against it to protect an evolving source of revenue?
Nonetheless, so long as LimeWire’s new digital music downalod store leads to more DRM-FREE MUSIC CHOICES for consumers in an increasingly digital music landscape, it’s definitely a good thing for us all and I may just make a purchase or two myself.
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Yea Rite! not cause they say its DRM free doesnt mean it is…
Probably watermarked…..
You know no ones gonna buy it if limewire goes legal people are either gonna use the original if they have it or move to a different P2P Limewire is taking one giant step in the wrong direction. Pirate away boys.
drmfree means no drm meaning you can transfer to another device or convert to another format without the program saying you cant.
look at itunes for example try to convert a protected song and it sais that the song is protected now try to convert an unprotected purchase and it will let you.