In another effort to combat illegal music downloading, Denmark's largest ISP TDC has launched a new unlimited music download service to most its mobile and broadband customers.  Its library includes music from the major labels EMI, Sony BMG and Warner and as the service is free as part of the mobile or broadband service, the consumer does not need a separate subscription. 

As with dedicated unlimited download music services, the main catch is that all music downloaded as part of the service is DRM infected and will only play on the consumer's phone or PC the music was downloaded to.  Another catch is that if the customer decides to leave the ISP, all music downloaded from the TDC service will automatically expire.  Customers who wish to retain certain songs after terminating their contract can pay 8dkk (~€1) per track they wish to retain a permanent copy of.

With so many consumers resorting to illegal downloads despite all the music industry's efforts including lawsuits to try stopping illegal downloading, at least they are now finally willing to try new business models including dropping DRM on single and album purchases and giving away music as part of an offer with mobile phones. 

In my opinion, unlimited music download services with time limited music is not the solution to music piracy and is the main reason for its very limited success.  For anyone thinking of building up a large collection over time from music downloaded as part of an unlimited music service, the main problem is that no one would be keen on looking forward to seeing their collection vanish once their subscription ends, not to mention all the extra restrictions imposed on the music.  To give a scenario to compare to, if one decides to convert their CD collection to MP3 and then later loses this MP3 collection as a result of a hard disk failure, this person would most likely see this as a major loss even though they would still have the original CD collection to build it up from again.