Buy your music online
It’s been a hectic month for music on the Internet. The guys from Big Champagne have been drumming up plenty of coverage in the magazines you find in airports across the world for their analysis of music download data, this week Chris Dahlen at Pitchfork captures its power in his excellent piece.
A friend in Australia told me about deal between Sony/BMG and a UK ISP linked to music website Playlouder to build walled P2P-friendly music sharing service bundled with a broadband deal. The radical deal is set to allow subscribers to share any Sony/BMG releases with anyone else on the network (because it’s a closed network they can monitor exactly how much and share the proceeds.
Last, it seems like the Australian indie distributors got together and decided to jump the online bandwagon. First up, Inertia launched a new website, including long rumoured digital distribution service along similar lines to Warp’s Bleep site. It’s very retail-oriented, which should be a kick in the teeth for the increasingly generic record shops in Australia. You can search their entire catalogue, buy directly from the site and buy digital downloads will shake things up. It’ll be interesting to see how they get around conflicts - being a label, distributor, retailer? Creative Vibes have jumped in too, though their site isn’t super friendly.
Lots of commentary on the move at Technorati. My Sydney informer, Seb from Cyclic Defrost, tells me: “The Playlouder thing is big… Playlouder is an offshoot of Beggars Banquet which is how they’ve been able to tie everything up. There is a lot of speculation that the Sony/BMG content will use heavy DRM - which will be pushed to the subscriber - for example if i have an MP3 of Missy Elliott then it will be converted to WMA etc as it transfers . . . .BUT that the indies will use MP3.”
Pretty fascinating stuff, I’m keen to find out more… I met one of Playlouder’s lovely editors over in Oslo the other week, so I might email them to try and find out some more.
calico
27 Aug 05 at 4:09 pm
Hey Calico — welcome back! The new WordPress site looks great, btw. Great post on Big Champaigne (i had missed the Pitchfork article) & the possible Playlouder developments. Good to see you up and posting again.
p.s. i updated yr link
DJ Durutti
28 Aug 05 at 10:02 am
And now this . . . .http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s1447649.htm
BBC rumoured to offer music downloads . . . .
Seb
28 Aug 05 at 5:31 pm
Thanks Durutti, I’ve been quiet a while, exploring the best way of getting the blog back up and running and I’m feeling pretty happy with Wordpress setup: all you blogspotters should move!
Seb, that’s pretty crazy news about the BBC. I read the SMH’s piece, which only really touches on downloads of TV and radio programs. ABC’s been moving in that direction for a while and doing it across the board really throws down the gauntlet. But music too, seems a little out of their mandate, very interesting.
calico
29 Aug 05 at 11:39 am
good looks brodsky
welcome back, i hope chinas treating you well
nic
29 Aug 05 at 12:27 pm