BMG Entertainment’s Buddha Records and digital rights management (DRM) specialist Digital World Services announced today the launch of a secure digital downloads offering as part of the label’s Black Anthology Web site (www.blackanthology.com).
Starting today, music fans can download free DRM protected songs from Harry Belafonte’s The Long Road To Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music, a collection of recordings that portrays the music of Black Americans from their earliest arrival in the “New World” through spirituals, blues, and folk music up to the 20th century.
The tracks are offered free of charge and are protected by Digital World Services’ Promotional Products Solution. This dynamic DRM solution enables Buddha Records to digitally distribute secure promotional tracks in order to increase the offline sales of its Anthology of Black Music collection which includes five CDs, a hardcover book and a bonus DVD featuring interviews with Harry Belafonte and the story of the discovery, restoration and relevance of the project.
“Using the DRM-based Promotional Products Solution enables us to offer free tracks to our customers while at the same time protecting the files from uncontrolled super-distribution,” notes Alex Miller, Senior Vice President of BMG Catalog/Buddha Records. “It is a great marketing tool for Harry Belafonte’s project that is now finally released, thirty years after being recorded.”
Digital World Services provides all DRM services for the site, including transaction processing, reporting and rights clearing. Music fans can download the promotional tracks and receive access rights for those tracks according to the usage rules set up by Buddha Records. Digital World Services selected InterTrust Technology Corporation’s (ITRU) DRM technology to secure the music files.
“Working with Buddha Records gives us the opportunity to demonstrate our ability to integrate flexible rights clearing solutions into any online portal,” says Arni Sigurdsson, COO of Digital World Services. “We are excited that Buddha Records allows us to be part of the distribution of such an unprecedented and historical collection of music.”
In addition to the DRM services, Digital World Services also provides the DWS Content Manager, a desktop tool that facilitates the download of the Anthology of Black Music files and the rights acquisition. The Content Manager provides the user with a concise visual display of download information as well as specific product information. It brings clarity to the user experience by giving a single library view of downloaded content, which can be activated directly from the interface.