Tesco launches music site
p2pnet.net News:- Wonder Bra is about the only large company that hasn’t launched a web site featuring Big Four record label cartel ‘product,’ we’ve joked in the past.
Now we’re wondering if maybe that might not actually come about given that the latest corporation to peddle downloads on its website is British mega grocer Tesco.
And it says it’s offering the first commercial music download site, “where almost all tracks are encoded at the rate of 192 bps, making the music of superior sound quality to that of competitors,” says a Times story.
Tesco’s service is supported by Entertainment UK, the music wholesale division of Woolworths which already supplies Tesco’s CDs and DVDs, is the first major supermarket to begin selling digital downloads on its website, says the Times, going on:
“The new tesco.com service will run on Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio format meaning that owners of the most popular MP3 portable music player, the iPod, will not be able to make use of tracks from the site.”
Oh Dear. Steve won’t like that.
The Tesco plastic music site is touting 500,000 files at a flat 79p (about $1.45) per track, the same as iTunes and 20p (about 38 cents) cheaper than the troubled Napster II.
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See:-
192 bps – Tesco jumps on to digital downloading bandwagon, Times Online, November 8, 2004
November 8th, 2004 at 8:20 am
Like all such services, it’s wonderfully illogical. Let’s take a sample from the current album charts, Scissor Sisters.
- Buy the CD for £8.99
- Buy the download for £7.99
- Look at the usage rights and details:-
- WMA (no ipod),
- 192Kb (good),
- DRM, Only allowed to transfer to devices that support SDMI DRM (ie not many)
- 3 backups. which is better than none.
So for £1.00 over buying the CD and ripping it yourself, you get a lower quality file, WMA only and no transfer to an iPod or most other portable music players.
Or you could go to Allofmp3.com and buy the download in MP3, no DRM, 192K VBR for $0.60 or in lossless FLAC format (identical to the CD) for $5.66
So why would you buy the Tesco Download?
And I haven’t even mentioned the P2P networks where of course the album is easily available in several formats for $0.00, apart from your time.