Digirama

Digirama Music & Entertainment

Type	Private Company
Industry	Online Music
Founded	2004
Headquarters	Auckland, New Zealand
Website	www.digirama.co.nz

Digirama is a New Zealand based software company. Founded in 2004 by brothers Shaun and Garth Davis it has engineered a platform for online media retail services, in particular, paid music & video downloads. Digirama operates its own retail store in New Zealand allowing it to continually develop the platform and test innovations in real market conditions.

Digirama's retail store was the first to offer a full catalogue download service in NZ (ahead of the NZ iTunes Store). It offers the country's only re-chargeable prepay card for music downloads, has real-time playlists for all of the major radio stations in New Zealand as well as its own high quality streaming music channels.

Digirama hosts several audio and video services for third parties in New Zealand and Australia.

Digital Rights Management

As with many legal download providers, Digirama has found its biggest challenge for retail downloads in device and software compatibility, particularly with the most successful portable audio player, Apple's iPod. The use of Digital Rights Management has, up until recently, been mandated by the major record companies. Digirama currently uses Microsoft's PlaysForSure technology, Apple's FairPlay DRM cannot be licensed by third-parties.

In 2007 one of the major record labels, EMI, announced it would begin releasing its music in DRM-free formats including MP3. The other 3 majors, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group have since followed suit in a number of specific services. Digirama's retail store is well underway with a move to DRM-free and currently has the largest major label MP3 catalogue in New Zealand.