Universal Builds Massive Music Archive

[Kent Pribbernow]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35999.html' target='_blank'>http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35999.html</a><br /><br /></div>"Universal Music Group's everywhere-other-than-the-US operation, Universal Music International (UMI), today said it had finally digitised around 300,000 songs from 25,000 albums from its European catalogue. That means they are all now available to "online retailers and distributors" in Europe, which of course actually means they're available to O2, currently Europe's only major music download service."<br /><br />The main implication of this story is that legal music download services can tap into this new music library. Apple's iTunes Music Store already boasts 500k tracks, this should give the service a quite a boost. There are still <b>many</b> albums and artists which are unavailable on legal download sites, such as the <b>Beatles</b> and <b>Foo Fighters</b>.

[possmann]

Does this mean that we, in the US, will not be able to access those files for download? That would suck.

[Jason Dunn]

Does this mean that we, in the US, will not be able to access those files for download? That would suck.

It seems that digital audio has a lot of "border issues" attached to it - Puretracks.com is the only service that I can use in Canada (AFAIK) - I can't use iTunes, Napster, etc.

[entropy1980]

You said Foo Fighters.... :lol:

Wonder what format they are digitized into.... :?: I have been digging on AAC, however been a little bothered that not all of my programs can use AAC files like MP3's things are fine on my powerbook with Final Cut Express 2 and DVD Studio Pro 2 but very bleak on the windows side nothing i have can use it (Premiere Pro..... Ulead etc....) kind of frustrating!

[James Fee]

Wonder what format they are digitized into.... :?:
I'd like to know too. I'd assume(hope) its a format that isn't as compressed as the typical MP3/WMA/AAC....

[Suhit Gupta]

Now, if only they run an FTP server on it for a couple of hours, won't we all be a lot happier :)?!?

Suhit