Mumbai: Six Months after the announcement of a legitimate music downloading system, Limewire has finally launched its new store. Although still in BETA stage, the makers of Limewire claim to add thousands of songs daily. The clincher here is that all songs are going to be available as 256 kbps MP3 files, free of DRM restrictions.

The store was opened with about 500,000 DRM-free songs. Surprisingly however, none of these songs are from catalogues held by any major record labels. The store, just yet, mostly contains works of independent artists and labels. All songs are priced at $.99 but membership to the store pays off better.

With subscriptions priced between $10 (£5) a month for 25 songs, and $20 (£10) a month for 75 songs, Limewire is essentially offering song downloads for as less as 27p per song. These paid downloads are currently available only in the US.

Although the free P2P services of Limewire continue to function seamlessly and extraneously, the makers claim that they are working towards slowly integrating the two, thereby merging into one legitimate music store.