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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."
How much is that cost per song measured in "cups of tea?"
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.
You want to /. a charity? That is low!
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.
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
p:
1. - pence - 100 of these make up 1GBP
2. - the size of your brain
sig not found. please replace sig.
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
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.