Tuesday
Virgin launches pay-per track music downloads service
Owen Gibson - The Guardian
Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group has become the latest company to take decisive action to address plummeting single sales by pledging to sell new tracks online from as little as 60p and make songs available on the web weeks before their release in the shops.
Virgin has joined forces with OD2, the digital music company formed by former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel, to make over 200,000 tracks from artists including Robbie Williams, Beyonce and the Stereophonics available for between 60p and 99p each.
Sir Richard, Virgin Group's chairman, said the new service would be "instrumental in putting the British single firmly on the road to recovery."
"Virgin has been a pioneer in the music industry since our earliest days, and low cost digital music is in the same tradition. We want to make it simple - and cheap - for music fans to sample and buy music digitally," he added.
The move follows a similar promise made earlier this year by EMI, which is also launching a new two track CD format which will retail at £1.99 in an effort to reinvigorate the stagnating singles chart.
The decline of the chart has been blamed on high CD prices and aggressive marketing techniques which have led to a high turnover of singles with disposable pop acts appearing in the top 10 one week and disappearing from the charts altogether the next.
Virgin will make tracks from the five major labels, all of which have signed deals with OD2, and make them available on the web on a pay-as-you-go basis. It will include exclusive versions and extra songs not available on the CD format of the single. It has also agreed a deal with BMG, owned by German media giant Bertelsmann, to feature exclusive tracks by its acts.
Among the artists expected to contribute tracks ahead of their official release date on CD are Sting, Starsailor, Texas and former S Club 7 singer Rachel Stevens. Later this year, a separate chart for downloads will be launched and digital sales are expected to be incorporated into the official chart from early next year.
Through the new Virgin site, customers will be asked to buy bundles of credits, with tracks becoming cheaper if bought in bulk, allowing them to download tracks and "burn" them to CD.
For example, if a customer buys a £29.99 bundle of 50 credits, tracks will cost just 60p each - considerably cheaper than buying CD singles, which typically retail at £3.99. Alternatively, users can buy single tracks at 99p each.
Customers will also be able to hear a 30-second sample of any track before they buy, or listen to the whole song for just 1p before deciding whether or not to purchase.
"Virgin has developed a fantastic digital music offering that will appeal to all fans, regardless of how much they've got to spend. Its decision to offer an alternative to the subscription model shows that digital music can be in a number of different ways to suit consumer needs and buying patterns," said OD2 chief executive Charles Grimsdale.
The record industry is under pressure to halt the decline in sales caused by increased spending on a wider range of leisure products, internet piracy and the end of the boom cycle caused by the introduction of CDs in the 1980s.
Universal Music, the largest record company in the world and home to artists including Eminem, Elton John and U2, said today it would extend its plans to slash the price of CDs by up to a third to Europe if the campaign proved successful in the US.
Interest in launching legal download services has snowballed since the successful launch of Apple's iTunes service in the US, with AOL, Sony, Microsoft and Roxio's reborn Napster all due to launch new sites before the end of the year.
Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group has become the latest company to take decisive action to address plummeting single sales by pledging to sell new tracks online from as little as 60p and make songs available on the web weeks before their release in the shops.
Virgin has joined forces with OD2, the digital music company formed by former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel, to make over 200,000 tracks from artists including Robbie Williams, Beyonce and the Stereophonics available for between 60p and 99p each.
Sir Richard, Virgin Group's chairman, said the new service would be "instrumental in putting the British single firmly on the road to recovery."
"Virgin has been a pioneer in the music industry since our earliest days, and low cost digital music is in the same tradition. We want to make it simple - and cheap - for music fans to sample and buy music digitally," he added.
The move follows a similar promise made earlier this year by EMI, which is also launching a new two track CD format which will retail at £1.99 in an effort to reinvigorate the stagnating singles chart.
The decline of the chart has been blamed on high CD prices and aggressive marketing techniques which have led to a high turnover of singles with disposable pop acts appearing in the top 10 one week and disappearing from the charts altogether the next.
Virgin will make tracks from the five major labels, all of which have signed deals with OD2, and make them available on the web on a pay-as-you-go basis. It will include exclusive versions and extra songs not available on the CD format of the single. It has also agreed a deal with BMG, owned by German media giant Bertelsmann, to feature exclusive tracks by its acts.
Among the artists expected to contribute tracks ahead of their official release date on CD are Sting, Starsailor, Texas and former S Club 7 singer Rachel Stevens. Later this year, a separate chart for downloads will be launched and digital sales are expected to be incorporated into the official chart from early next year.
Through the new Virgin site, customers will be asked to buy bundles of credits, with tracks becoming cheaper if bought in bulk, allowing them to download tracks and "burn" them to CD.
For example, if a customer buys a £29.99 bundle of 50 credits, tracks will cost just 60p each - considerably cheaper than buying CD singles, which typically retail at £3.99. Alternatively, users can buy single tracks at 99p each.
Customers will also be able to hear a 30-second sample of any track before they buy, or listen to the whole song for just 1p before deciding whether or not to purchase.
"Virgin has developed a fantastic digital music offering that will appeal to all fans, regardless of how much they've got to spend. Its decision to offer an alternative to the subscription model shows that digital music can be in a number of different ways to suit consumer needs and buying patterns," said OD2 chief executive Charles Grimsdale.
The record industry is under pressure to halt the decline in sales caused by increased spending on a wider range of leisure products, internet piracy and the end of the boom cycle caused by the introduction of CDs in the 1980s.
Universal Music, the largest record company in the world and home to artists including Eminem, Elton John and U2, said today it would extend its plans to slash the price of CDs by up to a third to Europe if the campaign proved successful in the US.
Interest in launching legal download services has snowballed since the successful launch of Apple's iTunes service in the US, with AOL, Sony, Microsoft and Roxio's reborn Napster all due to launch new sites before the end of the year.
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