p2pnet - rss feed: Virgin digital goes online
p2pnet.net News:- Has the bell finally tolled for Apple and its iTunes in the Never-Never land of corporate online music and its infestation of plastic music sites?
It could be.
Today, Richard Branson’s Virgin Digital goes online offering 1,000,000 tracks against the 750,000 tracks touted by iTunes (and the rest of them) at the now standard corporate rip-off of 99 cents per download.
On March 8 Branson said he was adding digital music to his line-up and as BusinessWeek said at the time, “Virgin is the first potential challenger with branding moxie that can match even Apple’s. The group, which posted revenues of $7 billion in 2003, also has far better natural distribution channels for digital music than Apple. The upshot? Steve, get ready to face the A-team.”
Of course, the additional 250,00 tracks won’t make any kind of difference in the real world of online music.
So far this month, on average, there are 6,802,130 users online at any given moment, say the latest figures from Big Champagne which, among other things, researches the p2p file sharing networks. And more than one BILLION digital music files are being shared and/or downloaded every month.
When Big Music and its adherents finally accept that affordable downloads and p2p for online marketing, sales and distribution are the answer to their problems, there’ll be a genuine musical revolution.
In the meanwhile, none of the corporate music sites - including Branson’s - are anywhere near tapping the potential offered by p2p and its countless users.
From Virgin’s FAQ:
“Q: Why don’t you have some music that I think you should have?
“A: Some artists and publishers have not yet decided to license their music for inclusion into services such as ours.”
And ….
“Q: Why can’t I burn or transfer my downloaded tracks from the club?
“A: Think of the Music Club as a music rental service. As long as your subscription is current, you can download and listen to as much as you would like. If you were to cancel your subscription or lose it in a drunken night of Texas Hold-Em Poker, you would no longer have the ability to play the content that you downloaded.”
And …
“Q: I purchased a song and want to play it on another computer. How do I do that?
A: Currently, we’re only supporting playback of material that you purchased on the computer that you purchased it on. Look for this to change in the very near future.”
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See:-
the A-team - Virgin May Show Apple a Thing or Two, BusinessWeek, March 10, 2004
Virgin’s FAQ - So, what the heck is Virgin Digital anyway?
September 27th, 2004 at 5:02 pm
“at the now standard corporate rip-off of 99 cents per download”
Oh boy, here we go. Do you cheapos show go steal a BMW because you think they charge too much for them?
If music isn’t worth 99 cents a song to you, maybe you shouldn’t listen to it.
The endless hand-wringing over justifying stealing something that does not belong to you is a source of entertainment itself.
And by the way-don’t vote either!
zzzzzzzzzz
“Peer to peer should be called scumbag to scumbag”
Nick Weston
September 27th, 2004 at 5:39 pm
When the price goes down to 10cents for a catalog item and 20cents for a frontline new release, I will start paying attention.
September 27th, 2004 at 6:10 pm
this is why 99 cents is too much for a song:
for a 13 song cd, thats nearly $13. For about a dollar more, i can get a brand new cd, with liner notes and cover art (and higher quality music in most cases).
A better solution would be a flat fee of 5-10 dollars a month for unlimited downloads. Compared to 99 cents per track, its sounds absurd, but with a deal like that, major label music and indie music would be on a level playing field, and you could try out many new bands. The price could be divied up, depending on popularity of the tracks. With this model, you would have no fake files, a more reliable and faster network (since it would be “legal” people wouldnt have a need to fake files or quit uploading). It works out for artists and labels. If even half of the 7 million people on file sharing networks at any given time paid the $5/month, the earnings would be $17,500,000 per MONTH… this is with basically no overhead. You would pay a few salaries for software designers and some advertising, but there is no packaging, no shipping, no biilding with electric bills, no materials, etc. This is easy money, but companies are too blind to see it. I would pay, its cheaper than cable, its cheaper than my phone bill. If it was this cheap, with no restrictions and more reliability, people will pay, its just that the current method cheats artists and stuffs labels while restricting my fair use rights.
http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/ << for how the 99 cents cheats artists.
MTW
September 27th, 2004 at 6:21 pm
Mr. Brandon is phenominal in his can do attitude. I just finished reading his bio and would love to have his autograph.
Very respectfully, Regine W. Griffin
September 27th, 2004 at 6:48 pm
Yep. That’s how DHB got started. And don’t forget the EFF idea - http://www.eff.org/share/collective_lic_wp.php
September 27th, 2004 at 7:18 pm
I’d be interested in some discussion and serious analysis of price elasticity in online downloads. I get the feeling that everyone has a price point where they flip from mostly illegal to mostly legal.
My own experience of this is AllofMP3.com Firstly they actually have a product that I want to buy. eg MP3, LAME 192Kb VBR with no DRM. And that product is typically $0.01 or occasionally $0.02 per Mb. At that price I’m spending more per month than I did at Amazon before it came along.
So what if Apple, Virgin et al sold non-DRM MP3 192Kb VBR as well. What would you pay for it and at what stage would you pay for the convenience of having properly encoded music with accurate tags and no hassle? It’s somewhere between $0.01 and $0.25 per Mb. I figure that around $0.10 they would make serious inroads into file sharing. This corresponds to somewhere around $0.40 per song. Can they make money at that price point without DRM? Sure they can.
September 28th, 2004 at 4:03 am
If Mr. Brandon is so phenominal why is he soooooo stupid to get into the digital music download biz????? In the next two years ALL of THEM will go BROKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Have you seen the web traffic for allofmp3.com lately??????