Universal Music mulls 'all you can eat' buffet of song downloads Universal Music Group (UMG) is developing an online service that offers unlimited music downloads for a monthly subscription. That news comes from The LA Times, which was treated to a PowerPoint presentation by the record giant's execs. The end result of that briefing was this profile of Universal Music's British boss Lucian …
As someone wiser than me on here once said: "I would like to acquire the media I want, pay and leave without an ever expanding list of growing partners knowing who I am, where I live, what I have purchased, what else I have purchased before and how long my inside leg is. I want to buy your product NOT become one"...
To add to that. If UMG is embedding fingerprints into their files uniquely traceable back to me, then I want to know about it upfront. No I'm not an uploading junkie, but I do share with friends and I cannot speak for them.
Speaking of the "singles chart", did you see the BBC documentary about it? I'd always guessed that the charts were gamed but I didn't realise the scale of it.
I can certainly sympathise with those who feel that downloading music via TPB etc. is OK after years of abuse by the music industry
Downloading is quite superior to streaming, not to mention more efficient as you only do it once, rather than every single time you want to listen to it - music streaming is a huge waste of bandwidth, if you think about it, as people usually listen to the same song more than once. not so with video.
It sounds like UMG have finally come to the conclusion that actually, people want copies of music and are will get them cheap (or free if anything remotely restrictive gets in their way), then they might as well be the supplier, and make a bit of money out of it. Sure, there are some people who will probably try and pay once and download the whole back-catalogue. Maybe there will be "fair-use" provisions to "unlimited" or maybe it really will be unlimited - after all, it's trivial to download the entire back catalogue anyway through less, erm, legal means. However - this time they're paid, so regardless, they win over having it all pirated.
But a supplier that has good quality copies is worth a premium, and to be honest I'd consider it for $20/month - and pay for more than one month too, as whilst I might download everything good I know of in the first month, after that it becomes much more of a "try something new" experience, and if that works, then they'll keep getting my subscription. everyone wins. It's high time the music industry worked with it's consumers, rather than against them - good music will provide other revenue streams in time, but the old way of charging £3+ for an intangible digital bitstream lasting 2.5 minues when your CD is £2 (and requires the full supply chain and distribution infrastructure) is a business model that is well and truly dead. Flogging that dead horse has got them nowhere for 15 years, maybe they're realising that actually, there are other ways to make money than by ripping your customers off.
Good luck to them. They still might need to halve that subscription - they're so late to the party that they've got to complete with the likes of netflix now, but this is the first step in the right direction that I've seen the industry take, for which I applaud them. (never thought I'd see the day...)
Er, have a missed something? Is this missing 'downloadable service' not Google Music?
Google convinced me to convert and now I love the service. I also love the album download option when running a song track radio and I find something new and exciting.
There is a problem with specific companies creating their own stream services - fragmentation. As a customer, I only want to pay one fee a month for all the music I want. So if every record company creates their own tool, then no one will want to subscribe as they are already subscribing to something else. This is the same with film streaming, or any other type of streaming service - customers want one subscription to rule them all.
So how long will it be before someone creates a paid streaming service aggregator?
*awaits sky to do this, charging £40 a month like normal*. Please someone else do it before Sky gets the monopoly on it!
I salute the initiative, but methinks I can pretty much simply buy all the music I care about on CDs for a lot less than $20/month (especially since I already have most of it), then use it unhindered whenever and however I wish with a clean conscience, whatever the actually intended terms might be.
EDIT: ...obligatory "now get off my lawn" etc...
*by unlimited they mean limited to what this particular corporation is currently licensed to offer you online - "IN YOUR AREA", or approximately up to 1% of what was available on Napster, for $20/mo when other services range up to $12/mo.
Brilliant geniuses!!1!!! World domination ahoy!! lol
I've subscribed to Microsoft's Zune service (now XBox Music or somesuch) for years. $15/month for all you can download, for up to three users. All those downloads are good ONLY as long as you continue to pay the $15/month. Once you discontinue the service, the files cease to function. The biggest drawback is that you have to use their device to play the music. However, that's not a problem for me as I am apparently one of those rare few who actually LIKE the Zune interface.
The value FOR ME is that you can download 10 single tracks per month that you "keep forever." Since single tracks average $0.99, that makes the service effectively $5/month for the whole family. What I find advantageous about this model over others is that I can "try before I buy." My son and I both have used this effectively to find bands we otherwise might never hear. "Are they any good? Don't know, let's find out. Nah, who's next?/Hey, that's a winner. Buy it." No buyer's remorse because I only "buy" what I already know I like.
The value of this model FOR THE MUSIC INDUSTRY is that it is priced such that I am not tempted to become a freetard. All my music is legitimately licensed, whether "owned" or rented.
...there is no DRM (which as the article says there likely isn't), actual download-and-kepp-forever not "rental period" or "pay-per-listen", no selling my download and identity info to third parties, and NO GODDAMN REGION LOCKING.
The moment I see "Sorry, this track isn't available in your country" even once, I'll be heading straight back to Bittorrent. The internet is worldwide, it's high time copyright owners realised this fact and got with the fucking program.
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