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Ben Drury of UK’s 7digital On DRM

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The UK’s 7digital and sister site Indiestore.com have been selling downloads in multiple formats for quite some time – a path we think you’ll see other online retailers follow in the coming months.  We asked Ben Drury, MD of 7digital what he and 7digital thought of label moves towards mp3’s:

What is your position on MP3 downloads?

"We are agnostic on format and have always supported MP3 as well as AAC, WMA etc. As a philosophy we believe consumers should be able to buy tracks without DRM so that7digital_logo_7 they can use them on their phones, iPods and even the Nintendo Wii (which supports MP3). However rather than being militant about it, we prefer to make available a large
as possible catalogue of music and video some of which has DRM as decided by the record labels. We continue to lobby hard to persuade them to let us sell MP3."

Do you think major labels will start selling MP3s?

"Yes. We have already sold MP3’s for Warner and EMI. Our recent Lily Allen MP3 for EMI was the first time they have ever sold an unprotected track. We believe we will see a lot of action in this are during 2007. This should be a transition year from DRM to non-DRM."

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