News - Universal and Virgin to offer unlimited music downloads

[HEXUS]

The inevitable has finally been acknowledged with subscription service launched planned by Christmas.

Read more.

[Crevan]

The interesting bit is not that Virgin will be offering this service, but what Universal will be asking in return.

"No customers will be permanently disconnected and the process will not depend on network monitoring or interception of customer traffic by Virgin Media."

So, if Virgin is not monitoring your internet usage to detect any file-sharing, that leaves it to Universal, right? If so, this again comes down to recording labels telling ISPs who's guilty and ordering them disconnected.

I've used Virgin Media in the past, and was rather unhappy with their peak-hour capping policy. If the above is true, that's gonna be another reason not to come back to them.

[Arthran]

The interesting bit is not that Virgin will be offering this service, but what Universal will be asking in return.
So, if Virgin is not monitoring your internet usage to detect any file-sharing, that leaves it to Universal, right? If so, this again comes down to recording labels telling ISPs who's guilty and ordering them disconnected.

I've used Virgin Media in the past, and was rather unhappy with their peak-hour capping policy. If the above is true, that's gonna be another reason not to come back to them.

i get capped alot on Virgin, Running with an unlimited connection. During my peak usage i find my net cut down to 2meg from 10 after extended downloads.

damn isp's, free the data!

[Hicks12]

Lol, good idea but crap ISP with these downloads then my internet connection will be throttled 24/7 because remember they are now throttling people for downloading off peak( eg 12am for the following day) so im going to constantly throttled woo .

[Arthran]

what, throttled for off peak downloads?

ohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrap

and yet wonderful I'm in an area where ADSL isn't possible due to awefull copper lines and being far from an exchange, so its virgin only for me...

[Blackbadger]

No mention of DRM, If they use it, the whole system will be entirely useless.

I wonder if "unlimited" actually means "up to 300 tracks, fair usage policy applies etc", or similar.

Maybe the tracks will be encoded with some kind of digital ID tag that could be traced back to the original downloader if a song is found in the "wild"

[Arthran]

Universal Music has taken the brave step of being the first major music publisher to offer its entire catalogue available for unlimited, DRM-free download in return for a monthly subscription.

first part of the article

[Crevan]

No mention of DRM, If they use it, the whole system will be entirely useless.

It's in mp3 format.

[Blackbadger]

O.o missed it ^^.. no drm and mp3 format is good.

[AntiTalent]

the cost of 2 albums per month?

No thanks. If they do a free trial (or a very enticing bundle offer) it might be tempting, but last.fm/spotify to stream music, decide if I like it - then a trip to a shop to buy the album is still fine for me.*


*-this might have something to do with no cable where I am and horrific download speed

[Andeh13]

cap'd here aswell!


Good idea but i loath Virgin Media with a passion. Terrible curstomer service, an air of arrogance when you call them and shoddy service (see being cap'd above). Would avoid like the plague, music service or not!

[this_is_gav]

Was watching the news about this earlier, and it was basically advertising The Pirate Bay. Rory Cellan-Jones was just sat there saying "of course, this is there to stop you just downloading illegally from TPB", and then they showed a screenshot of TPB homepage. Brilliant impartiality.

[Rob_B]

I'm interested to see how this plays out, it'll have to be a minimum 12month contract otherwise people will sign up for 1month, download the entire catalogue over 4 weeks then cancel. I douibt it's going to be as unlimited & easy as they make out but then again i'm a cynic & would happily be proved wrong on this one!