I opened the play.com homepage this morning, and found something that I had never expected from a company like play.com. They now sell digital DRM free MP3 music, for the user to download and play immediately. Well, hell, if they had a larger selection, they could be better than iTunes Plus.

I couldn't resist trying it out, so I purchased the old Arctic Monkeys album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. The buying process took about 3 clicks or so, and I was then presented with a page that I could download each track individually, or download the whole album in a ZIP archive. I chose the whole album download, which took about 3 minutes to download all 56 MB. Screenshot.

The music was indeed in MP3 format, at 192kbps, and they even threw in a JPEG with the album art on. Although I would have preferred a better bitrate, the music was good quality and played as I would expect a ripped CD to play. The music did indeed have no DRM of any sort, enabling me to basically do what the hell I wanted with it.

So, play.com have entered the download music industry. Wow. I didn't see that one coming. A few news sites did, about 3 days ago. PlayDigital Link.