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Virgin Media make announcement – we write an awful lot about it
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 16 June 2009
So the crazee people over there at Virgin Media yesterday announced that they had only gone and done a deal with the dudes at Universal Music which will let them offer their cool cat customers an unlimited music service where by the head-nodding body-popping music fans among the Virgin faithful will be able to download as many tracks as they God damn like every single month for a set monthly subscription of just five million pounds. No, it’ll be a lot cheaper than that. Three million perhaps.
In return for the privilege of being able to provide the kids with such a service, Virgin Media have agreed to hit naughty file-sharers among their customer base on the head. Not with a hammer you understand. Just a cushion. Though one of those heavy duck feather cushions that can real hurt.
I’m paraphrasing ever so slightly but, yes, later this year Virgin Media will launch a new digital music service for their ISP customers which enables subscribers to stream or download as many tracks as they like.
And unlike most other ‘all-you-can-eat’ music services, the downloads will be in the DRM-free MP3 format, meaning they’ll play on almost any device (well, almost any digital music devices – not your iron), and, crucially, they will continue to play even when your subscription lapses, or when any of the kit you used to download the tracks in the first place ceases to be usable. The entire Universal Music catalogue will be available, and the ISP-come-cable-company is currently in talks with other majors and indies with a view to having as wide a possible catalogue as possible at launch.
