Datz goes for illegal downloading jugular.

The Datz Music Lounge service will offer unlimited DRM-free MP3s for #99.99 a year

By Ben Cardew

Datz Music Lounge is claiming to be the first legitimate music service that has been designed specifically to tackle illegal downloading head- on.

Datz managing director Michael Richardson made the audacious claim in launching his company's new unlimited download offer last week. The new service, available for a one-off fee of #99.99, allows consumers to buy and keep all the music they want from record companies such as EMI, Warner and the Beggars Group for a year.

However, the service is only available to a limited number of people initially. For the moment just 100,000 units will be made available for sale though Sainsbury's and the Datz website (www.datz.com). But it is believed to be unique in that all the downloads are DRM-free MP3s, allowing them to be burned to CD and transferred to other devices.

In contrast, Nokia's Comes With Music offers unlimited "free" downloads for a specified period of time. But these can only be transferred to the user's Nokia phone and cannot be burned to CD.

Richardson says that Datz is aimed firmly at the Christmas market and, more specifically, at "30- to 40-year-old women" who are worried about their children downloading music illegally. "We want to make sure that with 100,000 people, we stop them downloading illegally, rather than cannibalise the market," Richardson claims. "It is the first thing out there that legitimately shows that you don't need ...