As sales of recorded music continue to decrease, the concept of point-of-connection-based music subscription services appears more and more attractive to record labels. In Europe, this business model of customers paying an ISP for essentially unlimited downloading in exchange for a small fee has already been implemented through Omnifone.
Now, the internet service provider Virgin Media has partnered with Universal Music to create a similar model in France specifically. The deal will allow Virgin customers to download as much DRM-free music from the Universal catalog as they want. A fee will be associated with this service, though an exact figure has yet to be reported by either party.
In exchange for their catalog, Universal is asking Virgin to cooperate more in piracy-related matters. France itself is already taking measures to protect copyright, so this request isn’t too surprising.
When are we going to see unlimited, point-of-connection subscription services in the U.S.?
(Editor’s Note: Sorry for the gap between new posts; I’ve been busy finishing up my undergraduate degree program. I’m proud to say that I’m now officially a Bachelor of Science in Music Industry!)
Congrats on your Bachelor of Science in Music Industry! Also, it would be interesting to see POC subscriptions here, but you know how usually when something good tries to come to the US and how we somehow end up with dumbed down stuff, like anime for example. That’s what I envision happening here. A dumbed down subscription service where you still have to pay for the songs you download anyway, and for a nominal fee, you can connect to the servers that host said files.