UNINNOVATE / Engineering At Its Finest

On Tuesday, DreamHost unveiled a new type of file download service.  The service allows independent bands, writers, and anyone else who wants to sell digital media online to do so without large investments in network infrastructure.  Called Files Forever, the service lets anyone upload content to sell with DreamHost providing all the file hosting and billing services.  The only catch is that all files sold must be DRM-free.

Files Forever!

What is it?

It’s a new service (during the beta only open to DreamHost Customers) that allows you to sell your own digital files, a la iTMS.. but with a few key differences:

• No DRM is allowed.. period!
• Once you upload your file to sell, you pay a tiny one-time storage fee, and we serve it FOREVER at a nice, permanent, URL.
• Anybody who buys a file somebody offers via Files Forever get an online backup of it included.. that is, they may re-download the file as many times as they want, FOREVER!
• Any file you buy from Files Forever you can also “loan” to your friends via the service! They are then allowed to download the file as much as they want until you ask for it “back.” (This is awesome, trust me.)
  
• We handle all the payment processing / shopping cart stuff, and take just 5% + 50c for credit card fees. (We combine purchases to minimize these costs too.)
  # You can even offer an “affiliate cut” for people who re-sell your files!

DreamHost Blog » iTunes Music Sore

This sounds like an incredible deal for anyone who wants to sell music or other media online but that doesn’t have the money or fame to reach other venues like the iTunes Music Store.  In addition, this service allows independent artists to offer customers a better product than existing online music stores that are laden with DRM restrictions.  Files Forever is the first service that allows purchasers to “loan” their purchases to their friends legally or redownload purchased files an unlimited number of times if the originals are lost. 

Full Disclosure: DreamHost also hosts this blog, but Uninnovate.com is a regular paying customer and has no other business relationship with DreamHost.

technorati tags:dreamhost, filesforever, music, store, itunes