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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?
once apple decides to open itunes out to the european market, will anyone be able to compete with that?
How much is that cost per song measured in "cups of tea?"
10p of the 75p or 99p charge to download the songs will go to Oxfam And what percentage of the remaining 65p/89p goes to the artist that made the song, again?
The real question is what formats do they support, and what kind(s) of DRM are used.
Y'know, you blow up one sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water.
This is more like it, I'd nearly feel good about using this service. Cool.
Windows only, IE only - judging by the other services they run.
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
The real question is what the hell is a p? Is that like a gil, or something?
Tracks will cost between 75p and 99p, with 10p going to Oxfam. Acts featured include Coldplay and George Michael.
"Artists will see their music help some of the poorest people in the world," Oxfam's Adrian Lovett said.
10p for the poor, a large portion of 75p to 99p to the record companies, a itty bit of the rest to Big Noise and the artists.
In short, helping the poor helps the record companies. Just give 10p to the poors in your area, or to the local charity, you'll feel better...
So I'll post what I was going to say as a reply. My post details each option (buying or giving the money directly to charity) and what benefits the latter option brings to you.
Imagine you have 7.50GBP.
You could buy 10 songs from the service. Oxfam gets 0.75. The artists get hardly anything. You get a crappy WMA file infested with DRM.
or
You download 10 songs from the internet and donate half the money you were going to spend directly to oxfam. Oxfam receives 3.50GBP (500% increase). You recieve a high quality audio file which will work on a variety of systems and contains no DRM.
Which would you choose? For legal reasons, I will not provide an answer. Of course most people will choose option 2 and keep the money for themselves but that's not the point. If you really want to help a charity there is always a better option than bowing down to a company.
I am a musician. Always have been.
Make albums. Record other peoples. etc.
I support Oxfam, but I am starting to feel like some kind of object. Everything I make will probably end up in some kind of big discount sale. A few more years and it will be commonplace to get media with a thousand records on it. Probably as a free gift along with your petrol.
It makes records seem like the free coupons you get when you buy the right brand of detergant.
It's kinda sad.
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
10p each track to charity is all well and good if the songs were say 20-30p each, but 75p to 1 quid? I don't think so. I may as well just go into Oxfam and buy a couple of quids worth of old cloths or whatnot, then all the money goes to Oxfam.
Until a digital music service offers me MP3s at a reasonable price all my money is going to the Russians
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.
And even can't tell us the price in euros ?
Or they start in GB and plan to expand later ? But why starting with a 60M people market when they are more than 250M people in euroland ?
good luck
Look at the number of music download services that are referenced in the article. Every damn company has to have one it seems. If anything this will guarantee they all fail because nobody wants to have to go to a number of different sites, figure out how to use them and be disappointed none has all the songs they want. As long as iTunes has a similar sized catalogue to the US version all these little crappy sites will only be a help to iTunes consumer acceptance.
How many pence out of the 99 is going to the Exchequer? Because in Florida, exactly *zero* sales taxes are paid on iTunes purchases.
The next pasture is always greener
Most people who labor in a "service" market leave no mark. Most of the software I have written in my life doesn't or will not have any hardware to run it on any more.
If you get paid for your work and not copies of your work you will be better off in the long run, since, (to paraphrase), in the long run, we are all dead anyhow.
Enjoy what you do. Make a living at it if you are lucky, get wealthy at it if you are absurdly lucky.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
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.
Last time that site was mentioned here it was offline for nearly a month. I had five CDs in the encode queue when the site was slashdotted last month and I was only able to start downloading again little more than a week ago. Had great service with them for months (years already?) and one cover story blows them out of the water for more than three weeks. I'd prefer if you'd go back to keeping this our little secret... at least until I get the rest of my Shakespeare's Sister and Moloko.
I've never used it but it seems like a great idea. What do you think?
Request your free CD of my piano music.
can I donate my unwanted "legal" music downloads to them to sell on at a cheap rate??? like I can do with my unwanted CDs, DVDs, books and the like...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
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).