Posted by
Hemos
on from the striking-deals-abroad dept.
nfras writes "News Ltd is carrying a story about how Australia's largest (and government owned) telco has done a deal with Warner Music to sell music online. It will use Windows Media format and will be similar in pricing to US sites."
Very Good
by
cubicledrone
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
These are all good announcements because it means there will be more competition, lower prices and higher quality. The music will get better too as more bands start distributing electronically.
Oh, and Apple has now sold TEN million songs from iTunes.
-- Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Yes, you've heard this before
by
orthogonal
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Not to beat a dead horse, but the proprietary windows format doesn't play on my portable MP3 player. And it ties me to Windows in a way I don't want to be tied. (Speaking of dead horses, Slashdot's been moving about as fast as one for the last week.)
But this you probably haven't heard before, from the linked article:
Telstra says BigPond Music will become Australia's largest music download site. Single tracks and albums will be available for download in early December, and will not count towards broadband download caps.
Yes, it probably will become Australia's largest (legal) download site, because Telestra BigPond will be both music vendor and ISP. In a triumph of vertical integration, users will continue to have download limits for Telestra's competitors, but will be able to "avoid" extra charges (which I'm sure will be built into the price of the music) for Telestra's own music site.
Now I know that download limits, and extra charges to go beyond those limits are pretty much unavoidable in Oz, but it strikes me as anti-competitve to lift those lmits for the ISPs favored affiliates.
And I worry that if this is succesful in Oz, we'll begin to see it elsewhere: high speed big pipes, for example, connecting AOL's users to Time Warner's offerings, and -- what an unfortunate coincidence! -- crappy connections outside the AOL-Time Warner group of companies. Or, no download limits between, perhsps, Verizon and eBay, but don't expect the same quality of connection, to, oh, Slashdot.
Of course, this will all be put over as "special benefits to our customers", providing "expeditetd access to the most requested web sites", but it's a short step from "special relationship" to the ISP turning its customers into another commodity to be rented -- "we have 10 million eyes with 5 million credit cards" to the highest bidding affiliate.
They Already Had A Legal One
by
perimorph
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
They already had legal ways to get music online.
One of them is called "Independent musicians who want you to download their music from websites".
And another is called P2P networks, which the recording industry didn't manage to get shut down, and despite all the noise they make, still haven't managed to show as being illegal in a court of law.
It'll be interesting to see what kind of restrictions are on the files.
Australian copyright law is fairly draconian compared to the US, and doesn't allow "backup" copies of music, videos etc, only some software.
If they provide an iTunes-esque scheme that allows the tracks to be burned to CD and played across multiple computers, consumers will actually have more legal rights with their downloaded tracks than they do with real CDs.
Slashdot Mirror
These are all good announcements because it means there will be more competition, lower prices and higher quality. The music will get better too as more bands start distributing electronically.
Oh, and Apple has now sold TEN million songs from iTunes.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
But this you probably haven't heard before, from the linked article:
Yes, it probably will become Australia's largest (legal) download site, because Telestra BigPond will be both music vendor and ISP. In a triumph of vertical integration, users will continue to have download limits for Telestra's competitors, but will be able to "avoid" extra charges (which I'm sure will be built into the price of the music) for Telestra's own music site.
Now I know that download limits, and extra charges to go beyond those limits are pretty much unavoidable in Oz, but it strikes me as anti-competitve to lift those lmits for the ISPs favored affiliates.
And I worry that if this is succesful in Oz, we'll begin to see it elsewhere: high speed big pipes, for example, connecting AOL's users to Time Warner's offerings, and -- what an unfortunate coincidence! -- crappy connections outside the AOL-Time Warner group of companies. Or, no download limits between, perhsps, Verizon and eBay, but don't expect the same quality of connection, to, oh, Slashdot.
Of course, this will all be put over as "special benefits to our customers", providing "expeditetd access to the most requested web sites", but it's a short step from "special relationship" to the ISP turning its customers into another commodity to be rented -- "we have 10 million eyes with 5 million credit cards" to the highest bidding affiliate.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
They already had legal ways to get music online.
One of them is called "Independent musicians who want you to download their music from websites".
And another is called P2P networks, which the recording industry didn't manage to get shut down, and despite all the noise they make, still haven't managed to show as being illegal in a court of law.
It'll be interesting to see what kind of restrictions are on the files.
Australian copyright law is fairly draconian compared to the US, and doesn't allow "backup" copies of music, videos etc, only some software.
If they provide an iTunes-esque scheme that allows the tracks to be burned to CD and played across multiple computers, consumers will actually have more legal rights with their downloaded tracks than they do with real CDs.