A new french download service will be back on line today.

Nupha Music store

They've been forced offline due to a flood of request.

They provide for Macintosh 128 Kbps AAC readable on iTunes (may do PC version if the demand is strong enough), and PC 192 Kbps WMA.

Apparently (as can be read here) they licenced the DRM Apple uses. They say transfer to iPod will be available in a month.

Limitations à la Apple, 3 computers illimited portable players transfers, album price 8.99 euros.

Worth seeing when they'll be back.

They are back!

The preview is done through QuickTime (at least to me under Windows) in AAC, I think as they said in 128Kbps like iTunes Music Store.

The library is composed of a little more that 10 000 songs, but hope to reach as much as iTunes for this summer.

I wish them luck.

Very interesting. I hope they have good luck, as well.

I wonder why they chose to offer WMAs in addition to AAC. AAC file distribution is free, isn't it? Are WMA DRM files playable in any software player that supports WMA? How about portables?

3 Macs, but only one PC.

The library is incredibly poor and they're in the same price range than the big shots, which is somewhat outrageous for a bunch of small labels. More disturbing, they're violating the most elementary consumer law : no mention anywhere of who they are.

All in all, this is not really promising.