BBC To Launch Music Download Store

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?"

Comments

Publicly funded?

[religious freak]

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...

Re:Publicly funded?

[Vectronic]

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.

Re:Publicly funded?

[WombatDeath]

Seems you're right about ownership of the archive:

"BBC Worldwide has already struck a deal with EMI to use the Corporationâ(TM)s archive of recordings by the majorâ(TM)s artists and it is understood to be in talks with the other three majors about reaching similar agreements."

Re:Publicly funded?

[Gordonjcp]

Also, there are some rather distinctly American-oriented commercials (for instance: how many UK car commercials tout miles-per-gallon fuel efficiencies, and displays the sales prices in dollars?)

The big difference here is that there are *no* adverts on the BBC TV or radio channels *at all*...

Yup, no adverts. You know that TV Licence we pay? Well, you know how it's quite a lot less than you pay for cable or satellite in the US? We don't get adverts on our BBC channels. Doesn't it suck to *pay* to watch TV and still get bombarded with ads?

GOON SHOW!!!!

[dltaylor]

Absurdist humor fans should really check this out, if they have it.

Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe.

If it plays on my Linux box, I want the set.

Re:Questions:

[TheRaven64]

You know the BBC operates several orchestras, right? And they have, over the years, recorded an enormous volume of classical music. Not everything the BBC records is a theme tune...