Dell's PCs to come with music

Sounds good?

By James Sherwood • Get more from this author

24th October 2008 11:21 GMT

SanDisk’s already launched Micro SD cards with pre-loaded tunes on. So Dell’s decided to get in on the music scene too and has launched a service to pre-install music on your new machine.

The PC giant, together with Universal Music Group, will offer musical bundles of 50 and 100 tracks. Then, once your new PC arrives, you’ll find your chosen bundles neatly arranged in a Music folder on the hard drive.

All tracks are DRM free, so you’ll also be able to move the music between applications and onto portable players.

There are lots of bundles to pick from, including one called “Number Ones Playlist” that includes tracks from the Jackson Five, Diana Ross and The Temptations. Dell said it will update the bundles on a “regular basis” though, so don’t worry if those bands aren’t to your liking.

Dell will install your chosen bundles on a laptop or desktop, but has said that it won’t do so on the XPS One or Inspiron Mini 9. It’s also refused to touch machines running Windows XP, Vista 64-bit or Linux - so it's 32-bit Vista only.

The service expands Dell’s movies service, which it launched last month and allows users to have films pre-installed onto a new PC.

Dell’s music service is available online in the US now, with bundle prices starting at $25 (£14/€18). UK prices haven’t been announced yet.