Music Ally

We wrote yesterday about reports that Playlouder has signed a deal with a UK ISP that will allow users to download music using peer-to-peer applications, with the ISP compensating the rightsholders. However, CEO Paul Hitchman has now labelled the reports “pure speculation” and said it has no announcement to (more…)

A report in The Register suggests that the UK may see its first `legal’ broadband subscriptions including file-sharing by the end of this year, with the UK government pressuring ISPs and the music industry to launch a P2P licensing system along the lines of South Korea. However, as far as we understand, this initiative is more about education - ISPs sending out `educational’ letters to users caught file-sharing, as Virgin Media is doing. The most telling sentence in The Reg’s piece is this: “No deals have been signed yet and significant details have yet to be addressed. These include the royalty share between mechanical, sound recording and publishing rights holders, and administration issues.” Sorting those by Christmas is optimistic, to say the least. We think labels are more likely to sign their own individual deals with specific ISPs rather than come up with a pan-industry Korean style approach. These ISP deals could materialise within a few weeks.

Amazon is finalising the plans for a global rollout of its MP3 store, with reports claiming that it’ll be launched in the UK by October, before transferring to other European countries. Like the US version, it’ll offer DRM-free MP3 tracks, and will seek to take on iTunes through pricing and exclusive content. (more…)