p2pnet.net News:- British charity group Oxfam and Britain’s OD2 corporate online music site have teamed up to jointly sell 300,000 mp3s across Europe.

The tracks will be available in UK currency only at between 75 pence (about $1.34) to 99 pence (about $1.77) per track, continues Reuters here.

How much is Oxfam’s share?

Ten pence (about 17 cents) from each song sold “will go to the group’s charity efforts to fight poverty and raise funds for humanitarian aid,” says the report.

It’d be interesting to see a detailed break-down of where the other $1.17 and $1.60 end up.

In the meanwhile, Oxfam is looking to music downloaders - “a group once regarded by record company executives as ‘thieves’ and ‘freeloaders’,” says Reuters, “to help it fight poverty and restore world trade imbalances”.

Oh. Ok.

But it would appear Oxfam and OD2 have only four days from today to get their joint act together.

The site is due to go online on May 26, says Reuters, giving http://www.bignoise.com as the url for the new site.

But when we went there for a look at about 9:45 Pacific, we saw bignoise.com for sale!.

However, bignoise.org, says register.com, is “coming soon”. Maybe that’s it.

Anyhow, “the charity is entering a brutally competitive digital download market,” says Reuters, echoing another story on the arrival of Napster II on the shores of Britain, also pointing out that Coca-Cola launched a download service in Britain as part of a marketing effort “to connect its brand with hip and tech-savvy teens”.

Hip and tech-savvy teens, eh?

Are they related in any way to all those ‘thieves’ and ‘freeloaders’ one wonders?

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UPDATE: May 23, 5:00 pm Pacific
A p2pnet reader points out the correct url for the Oxfam site is www.bignoisemusic.com/ and not http://www.bignoise.com, as stated in the Reuters article.

And it will indeed be up and running, offering 30-second demos, ‘listen-on-demand’ streaming at 1 once pence per track and downloads starting at 75 p.

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