Danish internet provider and tele operator TDC has launched a “digital music revolution”. We feel that we have to comment.

With PLAY TDC launches no less than a digital music revolution. In close cooperation with the biggest record labels in the world and in Denmark we now make a huge number of songs available for free to our broadband and mobile customers. We call it PLAY. With PLAY you can download as many songs you like at tdc.dk/musik. (rough translation).

But what is wrong with this concept? Well there is so much wrong that we don’t know where to start..

1) What the citation above doesn’t say is that the files you download are windows media files infected with DRM – disguised as a “license” – which makes it impossible to play the songs on other devices than the one you downloaded it to. So you cannot transfer it to your ipod or listen to it in the car or send to a friend on msn. No customers can accept this.
What we see here is TDC and the record labels trying to treat the digital file as a physical product that can’t be copied. In these days when the tendency is going towards DRM-free music we find it odd and just hopelessly old-fashioned to launch a DRM-driven service. TDC will soon be way behind other players in the field of digital music.

2) If you cancel your TDC subscription, your downloaded files will be erased automatically. So you only borrow the files.. Again, no customer should accept this.

3) You can download millions of songs from PLAY, but in reality it is a closed off market with a few record labels deciding what is for download. In the end it doesn’t matter when everything is available on file sharing networks for free – free as in unlimited, high quality mp3 and without DRM.

What the record labels probably think is that the customers can find good music through PLAY and then go to the iTunes store and buy the music without DRM. And when TDC furthermore wants to pay the record labels millions of euros to do their marketing, well then why not? Maybe TDC didn’t think of this.

We say: let people pay for the music if they want to. But sell it without DRM. And if they don’t want to pay, then they can download it for free somewhere else.

It is scary to think of how much money TDC put into this useless project. In the video below CEO Jens Alder mentions the employees of TDC twice (in Danish):