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BBC To Launch Music Download Store

Posted by timothy on from the cat-detector-van dept.

Jackson writes "According to a post on Cnet today, the BBC is working on a paid-for download, and ad-supported streaming music store, making available its entire archive of music recorded at BBC studios for TV and radio. The venture has major label backing and is rumoured to be launching next year. More interesting still is that the service will be run by BBC Worldwide — the commercial arm of the BBC — meaning downloads are likely to be available to the entire world, not just the UK. Beatles radio sessions, anyone?"

4 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Publicly funded? by religious+freak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The thing I don't understand is this...

    If the BBC is publicly funded by the British people, why the hell are they charging for their content? Isn't that a bit absurd?

    Same thing goes for PBS here in the States, though I've got slightly (very slightly) more ambivalence towards them because they receive such a minuscule amount from the government and they are always stretched on budget. But still, PBS shouldn't be charging for content...

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    1. Re:Publicly funded? by Vectronic · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hmm, but would you want your taxes/gifts/donations etc going towards royalties to some music company? I would presume that the BBC doesnt have complete control over some, or most of the music they would be distributing.

      And on the other side, if they can make more money from this, it means they can A: put their normal funding to better use, or B: not use as much.

      However, having it ad-funded, will inevitably make the advertisers have more control over its existance.

      And as for PBS, I think they should be allowed to charge for content in certain cases, like VHS/DVD/CD copies of shows as they have already put their income into making the show, not duplication and distribution of discs.

    2. Re:Publicly funded? by Chaos+Incarnate · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You say that you're in the US, so you're not funding them; they certainly have the right to charge you.

      As for charging the British... well, this certainly doesn't sound like something that comes under the remit of the TV license fee, so charging users is the only other way to get funding for it.

      --
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    3. Re:Publicly funded? by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's why it's being put under BBC Worldwide. They claim British money doesn't go into the Worldwide portion so they can do what they like.

      However I don't buy that the worldwide unit doesn't get any benefit from the tv licence. Hell, the fact it was British licence money that funded those records means that we've paid for them to have those recordings and now we're going to get charged again if we want something from there.