UK firm gets Sony BMG tracks
p2pnet.net News:- Britain`s PlayLouder MSP (music service provider) has reached a licensing deal with Sony BMG under which subscribers will be able to download from Sony BMG’s online catalogues, it says.
And it`s the first and only firm to have done so, it states.
PLMSP will pay music rights owners part of broadband subscription revenues generated by subscribers, subject to an agreed minimum per subscriber per month, it says, promising users can, freely share licensed music with other PLMSP subscribers using P2P file-sharing for no extra cost.
Available will be mp3s from Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, George Michael, Jamiroquai, Macy Gray, Manic Street Preachers, Oasis, The Clash, Travis, Jennifer Lopez, Elvis Presley, Pink, Will Young, Outkast, Alicia Keys and Dido, among others.
The deal sees a major label embrace a new business model, which brings licensed file sharing to UK consumers for the first time, states PLMSP.
Users will buy broadband access for £27 per month all-in (almost $50, at the time of writing, and the same price as BT’s service) as well as “unlimited downloading”.
PLMSP says its unique position as the world’s only licensed music ISP allows it to control the flow of music files over its network ensuring that all file-sharing traffic stays within its `walled-garden’.
By controlling the network on which the music flows, PLMSP is able to effectively and accurately track and monitor the distribution of digital music through a sophisticated method of audio fingerprinting and return the appropriate share of revenues back to the rights owners.
The company says it already has licenses from most of the leading indie record labels via a deal agreed with the Association of Independent Music (AIM) in November last year.
Will the other members of the Big Four music cartel follow suit?
Count on it.
“Ensuring record companies are adequately and reliably recompensed for the use of their copyrights on the internet is the number one issue for our business, says the cartel`s BPI (British Phonographic Industry) that`s currently spearheading the effort to sue people into buying Big Music cartel downloads.
The BPI welcomes the innovative thinking which has gone into the creation of PlayLouder MSP and we give it our full support.”
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See:-
PLMSP – WORLD’S ONLY MUSIC ISP SIGNS LANDMARK UK DEAL WITH SONY BMG, August 22, 2005
August 22nd, 2005 at 6:49 pm
Cory is waxing lyrical about this on boingboing.
“This is such stupendously good news that I frankly didn’t believe it. This is what EFF has been calling for for years now, a Voluntary Collective Licensing Scheme will break the file-sharing deadlock and give the majority of Internet users who file-share today the chance to get legit while compensating rightsholders.”
“PlayLouder MSP has deals with many indy labels as well as Sony, and those labels will also get a proportional cut of the money that PlayLouder MSP takes in based on their network monitoring. The ISP says that it is negotiating with other major labels and hopes they’ll come into the fold soon.”
The thing that bothers me about this is the centralization and the dependence on deals with specific labels to get compensation at least nearer to the artist. Is there a mechanism here for truly independent artists to get paid? What about artists signed to a label that doesn’t participate?
But I think the biggest confusion here is going to be the relationship between the end user and the copyright owner. Can we expect the end user to be able to work out that sharing Sony tunes is OK, but sharing EMI tunes is not ok and likely to get you a law suit through the letter box?
Both of thees objections lead me to believe that this is better handled by something like the Performing Rights Society. But we know that that mechanism is a long way from being perfect.
And finally there’s some double think here. The EFF has been quick to debunk Audible Magic. But now it’s going to be the saviour? See http://www.eff.org/share/?f=audible_magic2.html
So I’m cautiously optimistic, but I can’t be as gung ho about this as Cory seems to be.