Music Ally

UPDATE: We forgot the number one rule of journalism: headlines ending in a question mark can usually be answered by ‘No’. Ah well.

This is pure, rampant speculation on our part, but we’d like to think it’s educated. Check this agenda for the Telco 2.0 conference today in London. The first session focuses on Media 2.0 – what do you notice about the speakers?

Okay, yes, it’s another chance for UK Music boss Feargal Sharkey to butt heads with media futurist Gerd Leonhard – sparks flew between the pair when they were on the same panel at MidemNet earlier this year. But what’s more interesting is the presence of Virgin Media’s broadband boss Jon James, and Universal Music Group’s VP of digital Francis Keeling.

Nothing surprising in that – they’re working together on a new music service after all. But that’s the thing – sources have suggested to Music Ally that this morning’s session will see Virgin Media and UMG announce final details of what form the service will take, and when it will launch. We (and investors, more pertinently) would expect some kind of formal announcement before anything is unveiled, and at the time of writing there’s nothing up on Virgin Media’s online press office or investor centre.

Still, the session kicks off at 9am, so there’s still time. If Virgin and UMG are talking details, it will be interesting to see if the mooted unlimited top tier of the service is still in place. Plans to offer customers unlimited MP3 downloads were reportedly dented by the unwillingness of other major labels to sign up. Anyway, all eyes on Telco 2.0 – naturally we’ll keep you updated on here.

Tags: UMG, Virgin Media

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 9:18 am and is filed under Digital Music News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.