BBC To Launch Music Download Store

Jackson writes "According to a post on Cnet today, the BBC is working on a paid-for download, and ad-supported streaming music store, making available its entire archive of music recorded at BBC studios for TV and radio. The venture has major label backing and is rumoured to be launching next year. More interesting still is that the service will be run by BBC Worldwide — the commercial arm of the BBC — meaning downloads are likely to be available to the entire world, not just the UK. Beatles radio sessions, anyone?"

Re:Publicly funded?

[WombatDeath]

Seems you're right about ownership of the archive:

"BBC Worldwide has already struck a deal with EMI to use the Corporationâ(TM)s archive of recordings by the majorâ(TM)s artists and it is understood to be in talks with the other three majors about reaching similar agreements."

Only one question

[Bryansix]

Will the music you buy be DRM free? I only buy from Amazon now because I'm not up to buy my music five or six times in my life. I just want to buy it once and use it however I damn well please.

GOON SHOW!!!!

[dltaylor]

Absurdist humor fans should really check this out, if they have it.

Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe.

If it plays on my Linux box, I want the set.

Re:Questions:

[TheRaven64]

You know the BBC operates several orchestras, right? And they have, over the years, recorded an enormous volume of classical music. Not everything the BBC records is a theme tune...

Re:Publicly funded?

[Bogtha]

Hell, the fact it was British licence money that funded those records means that we've paid for them

I suspect BBC Worldwide will pay the BBC for a license to sell this content.

Aren't BBC Worldwide big fans of Windows Media?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would expect the format that was used to be Windows Media as I read that that part of the BBC has always tried to push it.

Re:Publicly funded?

[Ilgaz]

Funny that you mention you wouldn't touch such a thing (Realplayer Linux) while it is the cleanest, best performing Real player on the internet which you can actually build right away from source (Helix Community).

OS X version which has been always praised is the closest thing to Realplayer Linux, it is built on Helix Code/Cocoa Frameworks such as Webkit.

The baseless "hate" against Real Player as they are clean for years gives those MS bribed officials ideas of WMP only streaming etc. They think "Oh they hate Real anyway" as someone will of course question the choice of WMP while Real is available to anything you can imagine.

Also let me be the one to say as a OS X user. Flip4Mac can't and will NEVER do WMedia DRM. If BBC chooses WMA/DRM, say bye to your Mac streaming and install Bootcamp or Parallels ;)

They gave up perfectly working real/embedded for Flash/download and act like streaming. Do you know the result? My Mac Mini G4 connected to HDTV can't show BBC embedded video anymore.

Re:DRM'd to death like iPlayer

[Richard_at_work]

Actually the BBC does not own most of its content - its produced by third parties and sold to the BBC.