Dell PCs get preloaded with DRM-free UMG music
In a bid to help novice downloaders jump-start their digital-music collections, Universal Music Group is offering "curated" playlists to Dell PC buyers.
The Dell Inspiron now comes with music.
(Credit: CNET)Starting at $25, selected bundles 50 or 100 DRM-free songs can be added while building a custom PC on Dell's Web site. The songs will come preloaded on the computer, ready to play as soon as it's booted up.
The music option is available only on the Inspiron 1525, Studio 15, and XPS 1535 laptops and Inspiron 530, 530s, Studio Desktop, and XPS 420 desktops. The XPS One and Dell Mini 9 netbook are excluded from the offering.
The songs, all by Universal artists, are then playable on any device. You can see what bundles are available on Dell.com/musicandmovies. Track bundles include thematic playlists such as "Rock Titans," "The Classics," "Blues Masters," and so on. The lists will be "refreshed" on a regular basis in the future, and available for purchase on Dell's site.
Dell already does this with downloaded movies, but it's the first time a major label has struck a similar distribution deal with a PC company. Universal's tracks are already offered through a similar service on phones with Nokia and its Comes with Music program.
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur. E-mail Erica. 
I believe there is a large portion of people that download illegal songs simply because there is no good way to pay for it. If the mass majority of people didn't want to pay for music iTunes would have been a huge flop.
Never mind $25 for 50 songs. Try and find a lower legal price. I dare you. Even if you only like half the songs that come with the computer your still breaking even. Like more then half? It's that much better.
Plus it's not like you have to buy the bundle if you get a Dell computer.
StreamOG: No idea what the heck you are trying to say, but I like the dinner mint joke. I think you are confused however, these are DRM-free tracks. iTunes is not in tune with "user's rights and needs" on its protected content. You can not play on anything else besides a WIndows or Mac PC, or an ipod. Even their unprotected tracks are encoded in their own less popular (but probably better) codec as compared to mp3. If your mp3 player doesn't support it, then it won't play. Not everyone has/likes the iPod.
Sythara: Taking a compressed lossy format, decompressing it to cd-rw, then recompressing yet again makes your songs sound worse than the first time it was compressed. I suggest you look into what happens when data gets compressed. Most of the main stores sell lossy compressed formats such as MP3.
PCUser2008: Agreed.
PhaseDMA: Either a troll, or very sad. Please read the article. The music being offered is DRM free. Also, have you not heard of the Amazon.com music store? DRM free music for the same price (or less) as iTunes. This means you can take the .mp3 and play it on ANY device, an iPod or anything else that supports the mp3 codec.
So far Universial seems to be the main player in DRM-free music. I hope it is paying off.
- by PhaseDMA October 24, 2008 9:15 AM PDT
- Sausagebiscuit - Yes I did read the article. Better question. Did you read my comment?
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(6 Comments)I dare you to find one negative part about this in my comment. You won't be able to.