Digirama is a New Zealand based software company. Founded in 2004 by brothers Shaun and Garth Davis it has engineered a platform for online media retail services, in particular, paid music & video downloads. Digirama operates its own retail store in New Zealand allowing it to continually develop the platform and test innovations in real market conditions.

Digirama's retail store was the first to offer a full catalogue download service in NZ (ahead of the NZ iTunes Store

ITunes Store

The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...

). It offers the country's only re-chargeable prepay card for music downloads, has real-time playlists for all of the major radio stations in New Zealand as well as its own high quality streaming music channels.

Digirama hosts several audio and video services for third parties in New Zealand and Australia.

Digital Rights Management

As with many legal download providers, Digirama has found its biggest challenge for retail downloads in device and software compatibility, particularly with the most successful portable audio player, Apple's iPod

IPod

iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...

. The use of Digital Rights Management

Digital rights management

Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...

 has, up until recently, been mandated by the major record companies. Digirama currently uses Microsoft's PlaysForSure technology, Apple's FairPlay

FairPlay

FairPlay is a digital rights management technology created by Apple Inc., based on technology created by the company Veridisc. FairPlay is built into the QuickTime multimedia software and used by the iPhone, iPod, iPad, Apple TV, iTunes, and iTunes Store and the App Store. Formerly, all songs in...

 DRM cannot be licensed by third-parties.

In 2007 one of the major record labels, EMI

EMI

The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...

, announced it would begin releasing its music in DRM-free formats including MP3

MP3

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

. The other 3 majors, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group

Universal Music Group

Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations...

 and Warner Music Group

Warner Music Group

Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...

have since followed suit in a number of specific services. Digirama's retail store is well underway with a move to DRM-free and currently has the largest major label MP3 catalogue in New Zealand.