Tesco digital music download service vs Apple iTunes

It would not be the first time someone thought they could challenge Apple iTunes for a piece of the music download business, but this time it’s Tesco Digital and they have got a pretty good track record of giving the consumer value for money. The UK supermarket chain is planning to open its online shop next month with games, films, music, television programmes for digital players and that includes the iPod.

The download business is growing steadily thanks to faster connection speeds and the feeling of getting a good deal that in most cases is cheaper than buying in a store. Tesco Digital will offer a choice of 3.3 million tracks and half of these songs will be able to play on any music player in MP3 format. This means the song you want could well be on Tesco Digital and able to play on your mobile phone or any iPod/PMP.

You will have to wait to the end of 2008 if you want to download episodes of TV programmes and films from Tesco Digital, so it will be a long time before this service is really up to iTunes standard. The good point of Tesco’s download service is the fact that the tracks will come without digital rights management (DRM) software and this gives you a bit more freedom (Tesco will be the first large retailer to offer tracks like this to UK consumers).

We would all like to see Apple make iTunes DRM free/open, but sadly things are a bit more complicated than that. We will update you when we get an idea on what the download prices will be.

Source: Read