Dell, Universal Music offer DRM-free music bundles

Dell on Thursday announced it will partner with Universal Music Group to offer buyers of certain Dell computer systems pre-loaded music bundles to help them start their music collections. Each bundle will contain 50 or 100 DRM-free tracks that can be played on any digital media player or burned to a CD. The bundles start at $25 and so cost about half the price of current digital audio track. The content will be instantly accessible when buyers power up their Dell computers for the first time, saved in the widely used MP3 format and so not trapped to any one program or portable music player.

Initially, at least, Dell will offer seven pre-loaded bundles, ranging from the top 50 or 100 songs to bundles named Blues Masters, Afternoon Delight, Rock Titans, Freshmen, Sweatbands & Leotards or The Classics. Each of these has been "curated" to choose representative tracks, the Texas PC maker says.

The addition expands Dell's mission to give its customers wide-ranging customization options, which also recently expanded to media with last month's announcement that Dell would be pre-loading movies on some of its systems. The company has also teamed up with CinemaNow to allow users to download more digital movies.