Limewire Doubles Down on DRM-Free Music Store

Limewire, a popular file sharing application that offers users access to music, movie and other downloads via the decentralized gnutella network developed by Justin Frankel, the late Gene Kan and others, has more than doubled the size of its music store catalog by adding around 1.2 million tracks from music distributor The Orchard.

While bit torrent clients and online music services generally offer a wider range of music than gnutella, New York-based Limewire still appears to have a large user base, which it hopes will buy MP3s from the store when they're not downloading them for free.

Songs are available as individual downloads for 99 cents, or users can choose monthly plans including 25 songs for $10, 50 songs for $15 and 75 songs for $20 (a mere 27 cents per song if you use all of the alotted monthly downloads).

All two million or so tracks in the Limewire music store are available in a DRM-free 256 Kbps MP3 format, and a few exclusives are included. Many albums in the store are free, including the Ear to the Ground: Beijing compilation, featuring a number of contemorary Chinese pop musicians. Aside from this new music from The Orchard, the Limewire store features 800,000 or so songs from IRIS, Nettwerk Music Group and Redeye Distribution. You don't have to run Limewire in order to download these tracks, although if you have it running, they'll be automatically imported into your Limewire library.

As it tries to put together the music store, Limewire continues to defend itself in a lawsuit brought by all four major labels that has been ongoing for over two years. Perhaps this store could work in its favor in that case. If the company can show that P2P usage leads directly to music sales and royalty checks, the labels could change their minds.