Virgin Media has announced that they have struck a deal with Universal Music that will offer Virgin Media broadband customers unlimited music streams and downloads, at the cost of a monthly subscription fee. In return, Virgin Media will launch a new campaign to educate its customers about piracy, and introduce new measures to tackle those who illegally distribute Universal Music's intellectual property. The music service will allow users to download and stream as much music as they wish, and allow them to keep what they download, permanently. In addition, users will also be able to copy the music to any device which can play MP3 files. For users that don't download enough to make the cost of the unlimited package worth it, an entry-level package will be available. Virgin Media are also looking at working with other labels to offer a wider range of music.
In return for gaining access to Universal Music's music collection, Virgin Media will be cracking down on pirates who distribute Universal Music's music using their broadband service. In their press release, Virgin Media explicitly state that they won't permanently disconnect their users; however they will suspend access if users repeatedly share music - although they state that this will only be used as a last resort.
"This will involve implementing a range of different strategies to educate file sharers about online piracy and to raise awareness of legal alternatives. They include, as a last resort for persistent offenders, a temporary suspension of internet access," Virgin Media said in their press release.
While many internet providers and anti-piracy organizations have proposed more severe solutions, Virgin Media (in the deal with Universal Music) have decided to take a less severe route, and in addition said that the process of discovering users who illegally distribute music using their service will "not depend on network monitoring or interception of customer traffic by Virgin Media."
Although just how Virgin Media will discover users that are illegally distributing music using their broadband service may bring up a few concerns, many will see the deal as a way forward for both consumers and record labels.
Virgin media will be breaking the law.
anti-privacy deal.
This is how it is, and how it has been, for all ISP's and content owners for a while now:
1) Content owner (such as Activision) or external party (such as MediaSentry) discover that their content, or their clients content, is being shared illegally.
2) IP addresses are gathered by the content owner or external party and submitted to the IP addresses ISP.
3) The ISP will react accordingly. In this case, it is assumed that Virgin Media will take a tougher stance on the IP addresses. However, it is important to note that the external companies have no idea who the IP address actually is, and identify their ISP by doing a simple IP check, which anyone can do.
So, in short, Virgin Media are doing nothing more to identify pirates, only taking a new approach to the IP addresses submitted to them.
New artists can chose whether to be part of the machine, being ripped off for pennies on the dollar in exchange for marketing dollars, or whether they want to make 10x as much money but work harder to get their names and music out there.
While I'm an advocate of Spotify, and while this only includes Universal's music, this allows you to download and stream music, whereas Spotify only allows streaming. Admittedly, this only benefits those who want some of the benefits of Spotify while being able to listen to those tracks on the go.
Sure, nice to have downloads, but availability is paramount. I don't want to juggle with multiple services to keep being legal either.
Users would have to do their homework and figure out what they can and can't get for free, and that's just more effort than is likely to work in the real world.
This is FILE SHARING.
BOOTLEGGING is when people copy, master, and sell the content illegally.
PIRACY is what's happening off the coast of Somalia.
If its not debugged or has some qwerks thats expected... 'high end' music should be what is bought retail, like 5.1 channel recordings, or lossless compression formats. MP3 and digital distribution suits 90% of applications for the end user, and a small monthly fee is better than people using limewire or torrents to get their stuff and not giving the companies a cent.
Piracy don't have to be fought, but understood. At least some companies are putting their foot forward on the matter.
If you can't afford the game, then find a friend you can borrow from or deals online. Save money for music content. It's not that hard people. You can't justify stealing of any kind, just because you can't afford it. It's a dollar a song for crying out loud.
I mean, yeah, I guess its good someone is stepping forward and trying to understand piracy instead of tackling it head on....
But until we actually start seeing the action Virgin Media are going to take, are people really going to sign up and pay for something they can download free?...albeit illegally.
The other issue is whilst they are trying to appeal to people's needs by offering them a legal way to get music, they are also doing it to try and make a bit of extra cash.
So, when other labels join in there are gonna be 2 possible outcomes.
1 - The price stays the same, meaning more money to more labels, meaning less and less money for Virgin....So how committed will they be if they are only making a tiny profit?
2 - What if they don't want to make a tiny profit, and decide to start charging to download from each label?
All I know is, the chances that I've just talked a load of crap....is quite high
As for this - In my opinion £10-£15 a month is a lot of month just for Universal's tracks. If it included other record labels and eventually included the huge selection of Spotify I'd be at it like a shot.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.