Play.com download service

I was looking on play.com yesterday for a CD, and happened to notice that they’d just launched a new download service. It appears that you can download DRM-free MP3s there.

Nice!

The only thing is, albums are priced on average at around £7-8. This seems a little excessive for an album, especially considering that you can buy a CD for about £9.

I’m still not really a fan of MP3 downloads (well, not purchasing them anyway) – hard drives have a nasty habit of crashing on me, and I don’t want to lose everything! Yes, I know that you can burn CDs or other backup media, but (1) burnt CDs don’t last forever (they do have a limited shelf life once you’ve burnt them), (2) it’s a pain in the arse, to be quite frank! Getting a removeable hard drive and using rsync is not a bad idea (now that removeable hard drives are pretty cheap), but at the moment I can’t actually afford one

Anyway, it’s good to see that sites are starting to sell DRM-free MP3s, I might buy a few just to support them!