7digital launches MP3 store with all 4 major labels

How is this not anti-competitive / price-fixing/colluding / whatever you want to call it illegal...?

I imagine they would be cheaper in the US, as 79p is what we pay for music in iTunes, so I imagine they would cost what an iTunes track costs in the US too.

MP3? Call me when you start selling lossless tracks.

Sounds like a prima facie case of antitrust to me. Brazen, at that.

These things are often presented as if they are a big threat to Apple (though not so much here). But it is my understanding that Apple's business model is designed to make money on hardware, and the ITMS ismeant to provide content to support that model. If that's the case additionalspurces of music - like this - can only help that model.

"Currently, the store is available to users in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Italy and Portugal. "

what gives? i'm in Indonesia and have been buying songs from 7digital since 2 years ago. do you get some sorta notification that the website's unable to be opened from the US?

Yes. You can kiss $0.99 songs goodbye if this eventually works to break the iTunes 'monopoly'. Suddenly, all music will become 'better' when it's sold in bundles of 13 songs, with DRM again, for only $14.99 (or 13.99 pounds).

Ohh yeah, I really trust the music industry. By not offering Apple DRM free tracks, they're trying to bring down the only entity which has stood up to them. Then they replace it with their own crap stores, which of course will be full of DRM.

Hahahahahahahaha! MP3?? Hahahahahahahaha!

I like the sound of this store. I would probably want to buy the songs at 192kbps, though, because that's about the threshold where I can't tell quality differences. iTunes does batch-convert bitrates/formats, though, right?

They will have to drop the price of songs if they ever want to catch on here, but if most albums are available for $9-$9.99, then it'll probably replace iTunes as my digital music store of choice, as I prefer albums, anyway.