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."
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.
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.)
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.