p2pnet.net News:-

It seems Canada’s Paul Martin isn’t the only G7 leader Big Music has ‘persuaded’ to stand up in front of the world and say nice things on its behalf.

The launch of Phonoline, Germany’s addition to the online corporate music store line-up, was a fiasco – “even embarrassing German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder”.

And worse, critics are claiming the selection is too limited and the price of downloading individual songs too high, says DW-WORLD.de here.

“With more competition coming from overseas in the form of a soon-to-be launched European version of Apple’s iTunes and others, Phonoline will have to fight to survive.”

At the annual CeBit technology show in Hannover, recently, Phonoline was set to debut with much fanfare, says the report, going on:

“In a special ceremony, Chancellor Schroder, who in the midst of his ‘innovation offensive’ is eager to align himself with all things high-tech, was supposed to download the first song.

“But before the Chancellor could download Belgian singer songwriter Kate Ryan’s ‘Only if I,’ the German Copyright Society (GEMA) put a damper on the festivities. In an open letter, the society suggested that the Chancellor would be engaging in an illegal activity because, ‘the required copyright licence for this download at CeBit had not yet been obtained by any party’.”

[This is all true: we're not making it up - Ed]

“The flap exposed the ongoing battle between GEMA and Phonoline, who have been engaged in negotiations for months to determine under what circumstances music can be downloaded legally, from whom the necessary rights must be obtained, and at what cost,” DW-WORLD.de goes on.

“This begged the question: is this version of ‘legal’ downloading really legal?”

Apparently, instead of displaying his technological know-how by and downloading the song, Schroder stood by and watched as someone else did the dirty work and, ” What was supposed to have been a public relations coup became a fiasco.”

Now, three weeks on, Phonoline is still in trouble.

Why?

The hoary old Big Music 250,000-item catalogue offered by just about all the online music ’stores’ backed and supported by the Big Five labels (one of which – BMG – is based in Germany) weren’t quite what users were expecting.

“At the launch, Gerd Gebhardt, the head of Phonoline, promised consumers a comprehensive catalogue of some 250,000 songs with the daily addition of chart-toppers, states the report.

“But that has not proven to be the case,” it continues, “Users have not failed to notice that the platform lacks hits from music icons, like the Beatles, Madonna and Robbie Williams. Ditto for German stars Herbert Gronemeyer and Sarah Connor. “Comprehensive” it’s not, they say.

“What’s more, the cost of downloading individual songs is comparatively expensive at ?1.19 (about $1.45) to ?1.99 (about $2.40). And the songs are encoded, limiting the number of copies that can be made to between three and five depending on which online music store customers use to access the online database. Popfiles and Eventim are the two main distributors.”

Phonoline was meant to be part of a two-pronged assault to reduce music piracy, the story says, adding that as well as “proceeding with legal action against those who illegally use peer-to-peer file sharing software like Kazaa,” Phonoline was supposed to offer music fans a viable (and legal) alternative.

“But given the limited selection and cost, the latter part of the plan may not work.”

Does any of this seem familiar?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 6th, 2004 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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