Petteri Pyyny
3 Oct 2002 15:05
Music biz heavyweights have finally agreed to try how well legal digital online music sells among the general public when offered for free. Company called OD2, backed by various UK portals and labels, launched today a campaign called DigitalDownloadDay.
Campaign, despite its name, lasts for a week and began today. Every British or Irish customer is entitled to receive 500 free "download credits" that are worth of £5 (around $7.50 or €7.70) and can be used to either stream or download music from the participating online services, converting roughly to ten full-length tracks that can be downloaded and -- surprise, surprise -- also burned to CD.
But the big thing about this experiment is the scale of it. The campaign offers a music catalog of 100,000 tracks from 6,000 artists. Obviously there are some nags in it -- getting the credits requires credit card or Switch (British debit card) and billing address has to be within UK or ROI. Participating music stores and portals include hmv.co.uk, msn.co.uk and tiscali.co.uk.
http://www.digitaldownloadday.com/