Today will mark the day in history where French government votes on the issue of Apple’s evil DRM, the digital restriction management attached to each song, which controls the use and access of digital media content on mp3 players and computers. Will they allow Apple to keep this controlling element on downloaded songs? Hope not, but me thinks, oui – We’ll see what happens later on today…

Luckily, there are some alternatives. Enter: Starzik. Despite its weird tagline, “Get hit easy!” this French digital media service is pretty cool. Available only in France for now, Starzik offers songs without any digital rights management attached to them. By negotiating specific contracts with independent digital music distributor, The Orchard, Starzik will be able to offer more than 600,000 tracks of DRM-free music from three major labels and thousands of indie labels. The number of available tracks should grow in time too. Most of the tracks will be offered in different formats: mp3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and AAC. Music categories include: ambiant/diverse, chanson francaise, movie/tv soundtracks, classical, dance/house/techno/electric, children’s music, jazz/blues, Celtic and music from Brittany, world music, pop/rock, rap/hip hop/r&b. There are also training mp3′s available for body building and diet/fitness.

Songs/tracks are 1 euro and albums are 9 euros but you can find many free downloads on the site as well. Some of the music is really old and there are a lot of unknown artists – but just like with all things, if you dig and explore you could be led to some hidden gems.

Visit Starzik

Related: Apple Computer Stores and DRM in France and National Assembly’s Midnight Meeting to Propose Laws on Digital Rights

[via Macworld UK]

Tags: france, drm, itunes, french, music, downloads, starzik, apple