Music access now local and legal

DigiRAMA's deals with big music labels will give users access to bands like Green Day.

New Zealand is catching up with legal music downloading in other countries, thanks to the last of four deals with major international record companies brokered by local digital music website digiRAMA.

Aucklanders Shaun Davis and his brother Garth launched the company 17 months ago and quickly negotiated contracts with Warner Music and New Zealand label Festival Mushroom for their music.

Six months ago they added EMI and Sony to the list and signed with Universal six weeks ago.

digiRAMA has just finished loading most of the Universal catalogue on to its website, giving music lovers 350,000 songs to choose from.

digiRAMA's playlist is smaller than that of its main competitor, CokeTunes, which has more than 500,000 songs, but the site is cheaper, charging $1.69 a track compared with CokeTunes' $1.75.

digiRama's other big competitor, Amplifier, which specialises in New Zealand music, charges $1.99 per song.

Shaun Davis says undercutting the competition means the young company is making little money at the moment, but he is confident that will change.

"There's been a vacuum here for us to start up," he told the Herald.

He said digiRAMA aimed to plug the gap between free-but-illegal download services and international sites such as Apple's iTunes.

Australia, in contrast to New Zealand, has at least four major music sites to choose from, including iTunes and BigPond Music.

Here, people cannot download music off iTunes or other overseas sites without an overseas credit card because licensing for music is territory-based. To access iTunes' American site, for instance, you need an American credit card.

Instead, many people copy music illegally from CDs or free sites, which carry the added risk of corrupted or incomplete files.

digiRAMA hopes to encourage people to pay for virus-free music by offering it at competitive prices. "It's $1.69, but you're guaranteed it's going to be the whole track."

Shaun Davis and his brother both come from a software development background and Shaun spotted the gap in the market through his love of music. "I was happy to pay for it, but there wasn't a download store."

Together, the pair approached record companies and persevered in the face of predictions that their proposal was too difficult.

Shaun Davis said the deal with Universal had increased digiRAMA's catalogue dramatically. The site also has about 40 smaller labels but has been selective with what it offers.

"We could easily triple our catalogue but I didn't think Deutsche pop [which is a genre on CokeTunes] would be a big seller in New Zealand."

digiRAMA has also done a deal with The Radio Network, which allows music lovers to stream music from TRN stations (which include Hauraki, Classic Hits and Coast) and buy tracks being played.

Music videos are the next step for digiRAMA, which already has a contract with Universal and hopes to sign deals with the other three giants to give it a catalogue of about 2000 music videos - the same as iTunes.

The company also hopes to lead the way with a subscription model that is beginning to appear overseas and which would enable customers to download as much music as they wanted for one monthly price, possibly as low as $20.

With up to 10 new albums released on the site a week, that makes the price of a CD look steep.


MUSIC DOWNLOADS: RED HOT ...

Most music downloaded in New Zealand comes from free but illegal file-sharing sites. Many people use them but you are breaking the law and risk getting incomplete files and computer viruses.

The world's biggest legal download site, Apple's iTunes, does not operate here. You can buy music from the US or Australian sites - but only if you have a US or Australian credit card.

Some of the major legal sites now operating in NZ are -

digiRAMA : Just started, 350,000 songs, $1.69 each.

CokeTunes : More than 500,000 songs, $1.75 each.

Amplifier: New Zealand music, more than 3000 songs, $1.99 each.


... OR NOT

digiRAMA does have some limitations because it uses a different file format from the popular MP3.

This means that, unlike MP3 files, songs downloaded from the site cannot be copied on to another person's computer unless purchased again.

The Microsoft copy protection files that digiRAMA uses can be burned onto CDs or sunk onto portable players that support the files, including Philips, Samsung, Creative and Sandisk brands.

However this does not include the Apple iPod, because Apple does not licence to competitors.