Scandinavian Experimentation – TDC Denmark in ISP funded music model
The whole industry is aware that traditional, physical music sales are threatened by new mobile and internet methods of music consumption, and lot of suggestions for the way that music will be paid for in the future have been discussed. One such is the idea that ISP’s and other big service providers could be made responsible for the music that their clients download, charging a flat premium on their service contracts to be passed on to the music copyright owners.
Danish company TDC have teamed up with Warner, Sony/BMG and EMI to take a step in this direction with their new Play package delivered in co-operation with multi platform cable provider YouSee (Danish language). Their ‘Nordic’ users can make unlimited, DRM protected downloads from a catalogue of approximately 1 million tracks, including REM, James Blunt and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
“When our customers wake up tomorrow, we will have changed their everyday lives. They will experience that through PLAY they are suddenly able to download all the music they wish as a part of their subscription from TDC or YouSee, legally and without extra charges,” says Jens Alder, President and CEO of TDC. (from TDC press release).
I’ll be very interested to see how this innovation works out, and I think that it’s only by a process of learning from what users do and don’t adopt from new packages like this that the new model of paid-for music consumption will evolve (obviously with RouteNote at the forefront of development:).