And this is DRM-free downloads in the UK, redux: hooray for Play.com, written Feb 17, 2008, and concerning Politics, Web

My ceaseless quest for DRM-free mp3 download files in the UK appears to be over! A while back I tested Amazon's mp3 store, which was fine except that you have to be in America. Fail. However, Play.com have just opened a similar store in the UK. As usual, my canonical test song for these things is Feelin' Good by Nina Simone, and...I've just bought it from Play. As before, I have a list of requirements for these services:

I can download one track, instead of a whole album; I don’t want ten Nina Simone songs, I just want the one I’m looking for - PASS
No DRM. None. I don’t mind what the format is, if there’s no DRM, as long as it can be played on Linux (which is pretty much everything). Bonus points for oggs. Half a bonus point for just plain mp3. - PASS
A track costs a pound or less. I’m not paying more than a quid for one song. - PASS (99c is about 50p)
I feel comfortable putting my credit card number into the site. This means, in practice, that if it’s called something like mp3downloads.haxx0r.ru, I am not interested. - PASS
I can just buy a song by putting my credit card number in and getting it for download. I don’t need to sign up for an account, give them all my details, none of that. - FAIL
My music tastes aren’t very eclectic, so I’d expect the service to carry most of what I’d want to listen to. This means that a service for one label alone isn’t really what I want. I don’t want to discover new music with this; I want to get the stuff I already know about and want to listen to. - PASS
I’ll get, probably, about five songs a year. So a subscription service is out, especially since with most of them your music stops working when you unsubscribe. - PASS

As with Amazon, Play fail on the "don't need an account" idea. However, there are two extra thoughts concerning that:

They let you re-download the track later (an indeterminate number of times, depending on the record company) if you lose it or delete it. This is a good feature, and I can't think of a decent way of doing it without some sort of authorisation process.
I have mailed them with a suggestion. If someone's just buying downloads, why not have a "buy this without signing up" button, which just asks you for all the information that's required on the "buy it" screen? (You can't just enter a CC number; they need billing address and so on for the credit card companies, more's the pity.) Then, quietly sign them up for an account under the covers, and when you send the "you have bought a download, go here to download it" email, say "oh, and we signed you up for an account, with password GF78F$0.Fsf;" and they can use it or not care. No idea whether the Play people will take this suggestion or not, though.

Anyway, it works. I can get songs and listen to them. Well done, Play. That will do nicely.

Comments

Christopher

Nice write-up.

I've found play.com pretty unresponsive in the past to suggestions and improvements. One thing I wish they had is a wishlist feature. I mentioned that to them years ago, but never got any reply. I've never had any replies to other suggestions either.

But anyway, I'll take a look at the downloads feature now...

Colin

Wouldn't signing someone up for an account automatically be another of those things you shouldn't do?

It's not on the scale of a large high street retailer automatically subscribing people to a credit card but it's definitely got implications.

Do you enjoy getting automatically signed up to stuff without being told? Worse yet what happens if an account someone didn't want gets broken into? Who would be liable then?

karl lattimer

Managed to buy one song, now every other song I try to buy won't let me download.

Looks like a decent service, lets just hope they fix these minor bugs...

sil

Colin: all good points, I think. Maybe "if you want a Play account, click here in the next 24 hours to activate it" or something. I'm trying to avoid the whole "you must sign up for an account" thing, because you don't have to do that when you walk into a record shop.

DeeJay1

IMHO 7digital is also a pretty interesting service in the UK and the rest of EU...

Tom

According to vnunet (whoever they are), "Amazon MP3 is going international this year", which sounds hopeful if not a little vague. Hooray.

Tom Chiverton

TheRegister is reporting Amazon MP3 coming to the UK this year too, which is good because AFAIK play.com only has one record label (of 4) signed up to it (again, according to the recent Reg. article about it).

Tom

Yes, I couldn't find much of the stuff I actually want to buy on Play.com, which is a shame. 7digital looked good and seemed to have an amazing range of stuff, but a lot of that is laden with DRM.