Musical madness?
BT is planning a not-for-profit music download service to try and stop its customers illegally sharing tracks.
A leaked Invitation to Tender document has revealed that the service would cater for 5.5 million broadband users across the UK, The Guardian reported.
BT is reportedly planning on unveiling the product ‘in the near future' after it concludes present talks with big music labels like EMI and Universal Music.
Although a ‘free' music service sounds amazing, BT will apparently not make any cash on the service for the first 6 to 9 months, but will begin charging for the service afterwards.
It is currently not known what the subscription model will look like and there have been notable trials and failures before.
Some consumers might be worrying that BT's musical offering will bear some resemblance to Sky Songs, which was BSkyB's music service effort that shut up shop in December. Apparently it was popular with the music industry, but crucially not with consumers.
Some people reckon BT's service might use a freemium model similar to Spotify's, which has proved pretty handy, with 1 million subscribers in Europe.
BT's musical plans have been heralded by commentators as a sign that communications minister Ed Vaizey's meetings between ISPs and rights holders are starting to bear fruit.
Apparently Spotify is strangely absent from the meetings including Universal, Warner, EMI and Sony that are keen to stamp out illegal file sharing, but The Guardian reported that Spotify has been chatting to ISPs behind the scenes.
Apparently the music service is in talks with Virgin Media and a few other big players and it is thought that ISPs might want to buddy up with a partner that has got a great subscription model and growing customer base; instead of trying to go it alone and make a rival of Spotify.
