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Oxfam Launches Music Download Service
rahaydenuk writes "The BBC reports that Oxfam is backing the Big Noise Music website, which launches on Wednesday and will offer 300,000 songs for download. 10p of the 75p or 99p charge to download the songs will go to Oxfam and the service will be available across Europe."
..a link to Oxfam, a development, advocacy and relief agency working to put an end to poverty world-wide?
Given that it's a repackaged OD2 service, WMA.
James F.
Windows only, IE only - judging by the other services they run.
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
The artists have given consent that their songs can be used and distrubuted in this medium. The artists that will allow themselves to be distributed this way are doing so because they want to help Oxfam, not so much as to make huge lump somes of cash. The artists should be congratulated for not being so utterly greedy and helping out such a charitable organization.
Whatever DRM the labels tell them to use. Oxfam's using their music, after all.
The artists are most likely donating their music. When I was in the UK, there was a CD insert in a newspaper that supported OxFam and included the similar artists (Coldplay, etc).
"Paying to download from BigNoiseMusic.com seems like a good idea when you know your money is going to help some of the world's poorest people."
Chris Martin, Coldplay
They launch in a couple of days, so the site is nearly void of FAQ-type information.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
From looking at the site, it's impossible (as yet) to tell, since they're not actually launching until the 26th (this Wednesday) and it doesn't have much detail available yet.
However, from other sites using the same back-end system (OD2), it doesn't look too promising - when I try any of them, I get a message saying "The site you have tried to enter requires Internet Explorer 5 (or better) with Windows Media Player 7 (or better) on Windows XP, 2000, Me or 98."
We won't know for sure for a few days, but it doesn't look promising.
As one of the people who help maintain oxfam.org.uk - please be nice to the server - The server runs linux/apache/php combo (although the main pages are plain html).
Unfortunatly the main server is scheduled for an upgrade - to a loadbalanced combo, rather than the current single box. (which has not happened yet) as it is currently quite heavily loaded. - especially when UK wakes up..
Dont forget there are nice big Donate Now buttons on all the pages. (It's a very good cause) - with great people who use open source alot..
Taking PHP to the next level: phpmole, php codedoc, php-gtk pear installer, DataObjects for php, ldap schema viewer and
1p is one new pence (aka a penny) and is GBP0.01 (gah! Why does /. eat pound signs?) And in case you were wondering what that is in merkin money, the current exchange rate (according to xe.com) is 1.787 US dollars to the pound.
When iTunes Music Store came out selling tracks for 99 cents a pop, I prophesized that any European version would sell tracks for 99 pence per track instead of the equivalent of 99 US cents, or even 99 EU cents. All of the stores which are coming out so far have proven this true. Let's see what Apple does, but I can almost guarantee they'll go in at the same price point.
As a comparison, 79 pence is approx. $1.38, and 99 pence is approx. $1.74. With most UK digital music stores hovering around the 99 pence mark, that means Brits are being charged 74% more than Americans on average. Oh well, I guess nothing changes, and as typical we'll all keel over and accept it. If UK salaries were 74% higher than American ones you couldn't complain, but it seems to be the other way around, still.
Go here to purchase music and give the difference to Oxfam.
Not only will you be getting clean MP3s, you'll be able to help more people with the money you save.
With iTunes and ITMS, I can use PlayFair (renamed to something I can't remember offhand) to have no DRM at all and convert to MP3 at will if I were silly enough to own a lump of plastic player music and was not an iPod. Can you do that with your WMA?
Yes.
ANY music file i have used so far can be converted to mp3.
1. Download Winamp
2. Install and load up the files you wanna convert.
3. Go to Options > Preferences, under Plug-Ins > Output click on "Nullsoft Disk Writer plug-in" then click configure and set the directory you want to save the WAV file.
4. Now play all the music files you want to convert. This will rip out just the sound of the file in wav format to the directory you specified.
5. Now take that wav and either play it or convert it to mp3 with something like cdex.
Basically if you can find a way to play music you can convert it into a DRM free file.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
MP3 is the "most open" choice for consumers. It is simply that much of the recording industry is profoundly disinterested in its customers.
With 300,000 tunes, this seems more likely to be a case of labels agreeing rather than individual artists. IIRC, iTMS opened with something like 200,000 songs.
Tracking down thousands of artists (some of which, I assume, are dead) to ask if they would donate songs or allow songs to be sold would be a huge project. If artists were donating, I'd expect maybe a few thousand songs.
To top it off, the labels own the recordings more than the artists in most cases (unless they get a sweet contract).
Registered charities don't have to pay VAT (sales tax). Presumably tax will be factored into this service, as most of the money goes to the record companies, but Oxfam will be able to get a VAT return from the Government on their share.
--This is a self-referential sig--
If you guys actually read the article, it says it's just another OD2 (On Demand Distribution) outlet. There's nothing new or exciting about that. I guess it's nice that some of the money is going to charity instead of lining record companies' pockets, but when you get right down to it this is the same old WMA based service that's being peddled by MSN, HMV, Coca-Cola and a million others. Pity there doesn't seem to be a way to un-DRM version 9 WMA files at the moment (FreeMe doesn't work any more, it seems).