A deal struck between Intel and Panasonic-Matsushita will likely better any music security proposals set by the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) working group, the companies said today.

Intel and Panasonic have developed software products which they say will offer security on music held on PCs and transferred to other storage media and portable MP3 players.

Panasonic-Matsushita spokesperson Sakon Nagasaki claimed: "Consumers will be able to buy secure music anywhere, from a variety of online and offline sources and play it everywhere on a wide range of SD memory card enabled audio devices."

Intel's contribution is to provide a proprietary "tamper resistant software" which will allow electronics firms and jukebox app vendors to make SDMI compliant platforms.

And the software already exists on two Japanese SD audio player models supplied, unsurprisingly, by Panasonic.

It is unclear how other members of the SDMI initiative will react to this pre-emptive strike by the two big giants.

Intel's software includes a music transfer agent, a secure music manager and a music distribution integration toolkit.

SD memory cards are made by firms including IBM, Matsushita, SanDisk and Toshiba.

You can find additional information on the announcement here, at time of press. ®