EMI, Warner Music and Beggars Group team for music download service

Record labels EMI, Warner Music and indie label Beggars Group have teamed up to launch a new music service that offers fans unlimited downloads for £99.99 that can be played on any mobile phone or portable music player.

The service, called the Datz Music Lounge, aims to offer an attractive alternative to illegal download sites and take on Apple's market leading iTunes online store.

For a one-off fee of £99.99 music fans will be given access to download up to an initial 2.5m tracks from artists including Madonna, Snoop Dogg, Elvis, Blur and REM.

The tracks will be in MP3 format and are digital rights management-free, meaning users will be able to play the songs on any mobile phone, iPod or other MP3 player.

To become a Datz Music Lounge user, customers will first have to buy a USB key and CD from Sainsbury's and other high street retailers from the end of this week. Tracks are downloaded to a PC and can then be transferred to another device.

Subscribers to Datz can access the service for a year and keep all the songs they download forever. No details were available about what happens once the year is up.

However, the service comes with a fair usage policy, meaning that if a person were to download more music than they could "reasonably listen to in a lifetime", their Datz membership would be suspended.

The launch partners, which also include music distribution company Orchard, claimed more record labels would join the venture "over the coming weeks". They did not make clear what proportion of the music available would be new-release tracks.

However, Matthew Crosswaite, senior vice-president of sales and commercial development for EMI UK & Ireland, referred to the Datz service as a "valuable and insightful tool for understanding how consumers explore and react to EMI's deep and rich back catalogue".

Datz is the latest in a slew of new legal music download services gearing up for launch.

MySpace recently announced the launch of its controversial music streaming service.

Nokia is soon to launch its Comes With Music offering, Sony Ericsson has PlayNow Plus, and BSkyB has announced plans to launch a music service in conjunction with Universal Music.


Original article here