Petteri Pyyny
14 Jun 2004 14:56
British OD2 prepares for a long and, most likely, aggressive fight against the online music industry's golden child, Apple's iTunes. As iTunes is about to launch tomorrow in UK and various other European countries, OD2 has already hit its first punches in the fight by launching a streaming jukebox service that allows users to listen tracks from its 350,000 track library for a mere penny each.
The nag? You can't download the songs nor burn the songs for that price, obviously. The price applies only to a single listening experience, but at £0.01 each ($0.0181 or €0.0150), it sounds rather tempting offer. More permanent downloads, that can also be transferred to portable audio players that support Microsoft's Windows Media 9 specs, users have to pay £0.75 ($1.36, €1.13) per song.
As the online music industry is still very much in its infancy in the Europe, the stakes are high for the companies to gain the "critical mass" and the brand recognition across the continent before the market gets saturated with similar services.
Source: NewsFactor