Life after iTMS

After deciding I was no longer going to accept DRM crippled music, I decided to hunt around and see what alternatives were available - and I was pleasantly surprised.

Bleep.com

My Google search for 'DRM Free Music' came up with a thread on Metafilter with links to about a half dozen legal DRM free music sites. After visiting a few I came across Warp Records incredible bleep.com.

Bleep offer DRM free 320kb VBR MP3 and even some FLAC encoded downloads of tracks and albums from dozens of smaller labels including Quannum Projects, Ninja Tunes, A Guy Called Gerald and Wall of Sound.

If those labels mean anything to you, then you are going to have a hard time resisting the urge to spend up big. I had singled out at least a dozen albums within the first 10 minutes of browsing the site.

While the site is a bit 'design first, functionality later' based, it is an easy site to navigate and you can preview the entire track before purchasing.

Signing up was dead simple and within about 2 minutes bleep was zipping up my 2 new Max Richter albums for download.

DRM Free

Bleep files have no ‘DRM’ or copy protection built in. We believe that most people like to be treated as customers and not potential criminals - DRM is easily circumvented and just puts obstacles in the way of enjoying music.

While there are no DRM restrictions on the tracks once you have downloaded them - I did find a few albums that were not available for download in Australia..