Venerable classical music label Deutsche Grammophone has opened an online store allowing you to buy DRM-free MP3s (320 kbps) of its entire catalog, including hundreds of out-of-print albums. You can buy per-track (typically $1.29), per-album ($11.99), or, most importantly for classical music, per-composition, essential for symphonies, operas, and the like.
Slowly but surely, the record labels are getting a clue that they can't ignore the Internet forever.
The per-song and per-album paradigm was designed with pop music in mind, and doesn't work very well for classical music. DG has a feature which allows you to add an entire work to your shopping cart, which in principle is a much better way to handle calssical music. So here's what I did: I looked at an album containing Mozart's Requiem and his Coronation mass. The album cost $11.99, but I clicked on the button to add just the entire Requiem to my shopping cart. So it added every track individually, making a total of $18.06. So buying part of the album is more expensive than the whole album. This aspect of the site is not ready for prime time.
Other than that, though, the site seems easy to use and has convenient preview features. A few CDs aren't available for download; this is probably due to delays in getting the necessary legal permissions, and probably they'll get most of those on there in coming months.
DG is part of the Universal Music Group.
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