Universal Music’s Entire Back Catalogue Ready for Download

Universal Music has digitised its back catalogue and signed a deal with OD2, currently Europe’s largest digital music distributor. We say currently, because iTunes and Napster have yet to launch in Europe – and Universal has deals in place with Apple and Roxio for when those music sites open up later this year. OD2 operates MyCokeMusic and MediaMarkt, amongst others.

The 300,000 tracks will not be available as MP3s – Universal is keen to use DRM to protect the tracks which are extremely popular and bound to appeal to music copiers, though customers will be able to burn tracks to CD and transfer them to audio players. Artists in the deal include Rob Zombie, The Orb and, of course, the talentlessly unpleasant ex-Soviet sock puppets T.A.T.U.

Universal Music on music downloads

OD2

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Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people. Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon. At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC. After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video. These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?