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Platforma to launch free music download service April 25

Andris Straumanis

April 24, 2008

Platforma Music will start its free music download service at noon April 25, offering songs to customers in return for watching a four-second video commercial, the company announced April 23.

Songs will be available from the Rīga-based recording company’s Web site, www.PlatformaMusic.lv. At the same time, the company is launching a WAP site for those who want to download mobile phone melodies, wap.platformamusic.lv.

A recording company giving away music? Surely there must be a catch—and there is. Customers will have to register on Platforma’s site and will be limited to 10 downloads per day, which means those wanting to get a full album often may have to come back the next day to complete their collection. (Customers will still be able to pay for single downloads, too, at a cost of 47 santīms per song.) Concerns regarding the potential influence of advertisers on music should be kept in mind, as I discussed in my column.

Wrigley’s, maker of Orbit chewing gum, is paying for the first 50,000 downloads, Platforma announced.

The first album to be available will be Lelle, a new title by singer-songwriter Dons. The compact disc version will go on sale a few weeks later, according to Platforma. In all, the company will offer music by more than 200 Latvian artists from its own catalog, from other recording companies such as Upe and Avantis, and from independent artists such as Goran Gora and Zig Zag.

Good news for parents looking for bedtime stories: Platforma also will provide more than 25 digital downloads from the “Saules un Mēness” series that previously have only been available on cassette. Latvian versions of classic Brothers Grimm tales also will appear on April 25.

Platforma promises its MP3 downloads will be free of any digital rights management software and will be encoded at bit rates from 192-320 kbps. By comparison, the popular Apple iTunes service provides protected AAC-encoded downloads at 128 kpbs.

Andris Straumanis is editor of Latvians Online.