Europe has the first big competitor to OD2, the digital music distribution company owned by Peter Gabriel. Cable & Wireless, the telecom infrastructure provider, is jumping into the game, through its media and entertainment division…the announcement will come tommorow at a press conference at Midem here in Cannes…the service will launch with 200,000 songs, each priced below the 1 GBP level…
The download service, aimed to be sold as a white-label music store, much like OD2’s service, which MSN and Coca-Cola are using for their music services inn Europe. The deal is also similar to the Microsoft-Loudeye deal in U.S.
At the conference, the company is expected to announce its first big customer. According to an article in today’s Sunday Times, it is talking to UK’s biggest retailer, Tesco…Tesco.com is already one of the biggest online retailers in U.K…(Will Wal-Mart, through its subsidiary ASDA in U.K., jump into it as well? I doubt it…).
The first retailer to sign onto the platform is Phonofile Denmark…
C&W will provide the backend hosting and delivery infrastructure for the service, while it has tied up with a small Zurich-based shop called 24/7 Music Shop for the front end platform…the platform is a Windows Media based one….more details when I get them…
Subscriber content
?
Subscriber content comes from Gigaom Research, bridging the gap between breaking news and long-tail research. Visit any of our reports to learn more and subscribe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Comments have been disabled for this post