Slashdot Mirror
OD2 Launches Penny-Per-Song Streaming Jukebox
securitas writes "BBC Technology's Darren Waters reports that UK digital music service OD2 launched its 350,000-song SonicSelector streaming 'digital jukebox' for a penny per song a day ahead of the iTunes Europe debut. The service (co-founded by Peter Gabriel) is available only in 'UK, France, Germany and Italy and will only work with users of Windows Media Player' 9. NewsFactor and The Register have descriptions of the pay-per-use / a la carte service. More at the Financial Times and Reuters via ZDNet UK. You can also read the previous OD2 Slashdot discussion."
...right up to the point where he says 'will only work with users of Windows Media Player', and there my interest tails right off.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Who want a subscription service anyway?? Not me. I've just purchased a song from the UK iTunes store and it's now mine, all mine! Don't even think about whining about DRM. Oh Puhleeese.
gak
It's pretty tough to argue with a legal listen for 1-2 cents (exchange rate varies). I bet that 50-100 times is about as many as I could listen to a song before I'm bored of it anyways, and for 99 cents I can get either that, or I can own the song. Plus, unscrupulous listeners could always record the stream!
stuff |
This looks like an excellent way of "browsing" for music which is not played on the radio. I mean, it's not really competing with the $.99 "own the song"-price of iTunes, but rather it seems like a neat way to preview a lot of songs once (at a penny each) then buy the ones you like on cd or from iTunes.
They really need to offer something better then the legally grey apps before I'll consider them.
Maybe a massive site with full archival downloads. I'd pay for that, even per download, simply for the convenience of knowing where to get it, and the gaurentee behind the quality and speed of download.
Otherwise, they are just being woefully hopefull, or dismissive of online distribution. "see, see, we charged 5 cents a download for a crappy file that most people cant play where they want. thats PROOF that online sales dont work."
Give me a break.
There's a difference between won't and don't. Some of us, though you may find it hard to believe, don't care much about the sticker price of a working environment, so long as it gets the job done in a manner that's acceptable. It just happens to be that one of the best environments available today can be downloaded for free off the 'net (or paid for from a vendor like Red Hat).
I, for one, would be perfectly happy to pay for an iTunes-like service (their restrictions are acceptable to me, though I'd prefer either MP3- or Ogg Vorbis-formatted files; the former is extremely portable, the latter is very nice and reasonably portable), just like I'd be happy to pay for an operating system which suited me. It's a pity that since my operating system *happens* to be free, I can't pay anybody to let me access their service :)
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
iTunes Music Store Europe has launched. Cheaper than I thought. Less tracks than they would have liked. Some nice exclusives though.
But oD2 and the others are going to be running scared for a while. There should be some good offers on for European legal downloaders over the coming few weeks/months.
Let's see... the average song is 3 minutes, one penny per 3 minutes, let's unrealistically assume I work 8 hours a day. That's $1.60 per day to have this playing all day. That's about $400 per working year.
I think I could buy a lot of music on iTunes for $400 and listen to it for more than a year.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I would love to see something based on Winamp, for example.
Wake up! Let's not have it based on a piece of software, let's have it based on a fucking standard for christ's sake!
Yours Sincerely, Michael.