If you think it’s hard to find high-quality jazz to download, “rebel” billionaire Richard Branson feels your pain. His new digital music service, Virgin Digital, offers a download store, a digital music club subscription, a media manager and premium radio promising high-quality audio for the discerning listener.
Virgin stated that they spent a lot of time developing the right format to use for the digital music files, so that sound quality would never be an issue. The company’s jazz musicologists are dedicated to promoting both old and upcoming artists, according to a press release. Virgin Digital has more than one million songs to purchase and in the same vein as iTunes and Napster, each track is 99 cents to purchase. There is also a subscription service available for $7.99 per month.
While Virgin Digital is only available in the United States at the moment, the company states on its Web site that “We hope to be in a country near you soon.” The program also runs only on Windows 2000 and XP–and not Macintosh’s OS X. For more information, go to www.virgindigital.com.
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