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Music Media The Almighty Buck The Internet

Oxfam Launches Music Download Service 117

Posted by timothy from the good-cause-and-human-interest dept.
rahaydenuk writes "The BBC reports that Oxfam is backing the Big Noise Music website, which launches on Wednesday and will offer 300,000 songs for download. 10p of the 75p or 99p charge to download the songs will go to Oxfam and the service will be available across Europe."
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Oxfam Launches Music Download Service More

Oxfam Launches Music Download Service

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  • What about.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Karamchand ( 607798 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:36PM (#9233488)
    ..a link to Oxfam [oxfam.org.uk], a development, advocacy and relief agency working to put an end to poverty world-wide?

  • can they compete with itunes (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chaos421 ( 531619 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:36PM (#9233490) Homepage Journal
    once apple decides to open itunes out to the european market, will anyone be able to compete with that?
    • Yes. iTunes Music Store music is only portable if you have an iPod. Meanwhile, every other music player in existance seems to be adopting WMA.

      • Re:can they compete with itunes (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:59PM (#9233627)
        Yes. iTunes Music Store music is only portable if you have an iPod

        Funny. I don't have an ipod. I don't even have a mac. I buy music with iTunes, and burn to cd's to play in my old fashioned "cd player".

        • Funny. I don't have a CD player. I don't even have a stereo. I buy music with Rhapsody and transfer to a small device that is capable of storing hundreds of tracks at a time and doesn't skip.

          Try doing that with your old fashioned "cd player."

          The grandparent's argument is quite sound; WMA, despite being proprietary and Microsoft, is still the more open choice for most consumers, ironically.
          • The grandparent's argument is quite sound; WMA, despite being proprietary and Microsoft, is still the more open choice for most consumers, ironically.

            Unless the WMA you happend to buy forbade copying to a portable device, or burning CD's. Or until the service goes belly-up - taking ou tthe licence server, and leaving you a month or two to discover this fact and somehow save your music into some other format before the licence expires...

            With iTunes and ITMS, I can use PlayFair (renamed to something I can
            • With iTunes and ITMS, I can use PlayFair (renamed to something I can't remember offhand) to have no DRM at all and convert to MP3 at will if I were silly enough to own a lump of plastic player music and was not an iPod. Can you do that with your WMA?

              Yes.

              ANY music file i have used so far can be converted to mp3.

              1. Download Winamp [winamp.com]
              2. Install and load up the files you wanna convert.
              3. Go to Options > Preferences, under Plug-Ins > Output click on "Nullsoft Disk Writer plug-in" then click configure and
              • Yes of course, I do do the same fiddly work with things on the Mac. I can burn a CD and re-rip (which you cannot do with all WMA protected files).

                One protection is stripped, conversion to other formats is very easy in iTunes - one menu item, and you have an MP3. I can batck convert my entire library from the command line with one find command. I don't need to screw with a WAV or third party plugins.

                That's what I'm sayng, that all around WMV is a far more annoying protected format. To start with it's n
                • Yes of course, I do do the same fiddly work with things on the Mac. I can burn a CD and re-rip (which you cannot do with all WMA protected files).

                  One protection is stripped, conversion to other formats is very easy in iTunes - one menu item, and you have an MP3. I can batck convert my entire library from the command line with one find command. I don't need to screw with a WAV or third party plugins.

                  ...

                  With ITMS, I get a DRM file with predictable properties and restrictions. And if those restrictions are
                  • So, you consider converting WMA->WAV->whatever to be more cumbersome than burning in iTunes, ripping , and converting? I don't.

                    No, I consider your WMA conversion more annoying than clicking on a menu option to "convert to MP3", after I have already stripped the DRM from an AAC file (which involved no intermediate files and can be done in batch by an automated process, in seconds for any number of songs).

                    The DiskWriter plugin is not third-party. It comes with Winamp. Made by Nullsoft.

                    They shippin
              • Yeah thats a great idea use a lossy compression once to get the WMA format then use ANOTHER lossy compression to get to mp3. You now have a file that sounds nothing like the original!

                They should have the option to download in raw format then those who want to use compression can and the compression of their choice.

              • I haven't tried this (I don't have any DRM'd WMAs to test), but my copy of Winamp has this in the Changelog:
                Winamp 2.61:

                * In accordance with Microsoft's license agreement, we no longer allow you to use DSP plug-ins or alternate output plug-ins when playing WMA files.
                Do you have version of Winamp older than 2.61? Or a new version (version 5 or whatever)? Or is the changelog lying to me?
          • MP3 is the "most open" choice for consumers. It is simply that much of the recording industry is profoundly disinterested in its customers.
    • Look at the number of music download services that are referenced in the article. Every damn company has to have one it seems. If anything this will guarantee they all fail because nobody wants to have to go to a number of different sites, figure out how to use them and be disappointed none has all the songs they want. As long as iTunes has a similar sized catalogue to the US version all these little crappy sites will only be a help to iTunes consumer acceptance.

  • the British connection (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:37PM (#9233494)
    How much is that cost per song measured in "cups of tea?"

  • And uh... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by prisen ( 578061 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:37PM (#9233498)
    10p of the 75p or 99p charge to download the songs will go to Oxfam And what percentage of the remaining 65p/89p goes to the artist that made the song, again?

    • Re:And uh... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tiro ( 19535 )
      Don't blame Oxfam for this. They have to play the capitalist game too.

      Blame the RIAA monopoly for the bands getting screwed.

    • Re:And uh... (Score:5, Informative)

      by edoc ( 772148 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:49PM (#9233570)
      The artists have given consent that their songs can be used and distrubuted in this medium. The artists that will allow themselves to be distributed this way are doing so because they want to help Oxfam, not so much as to make huge lump somes of cash. The artists should be congratulated for not being so utterly greedy and helping out such a charitable organization.
      • With 300,000 tunes, this seems more likely to be a case of labels agreeing rather than individual artists. IIRC, iTMS opened with something like 200,000 songs.

        Tracking down thousands of artists (some of which, I assume, are dead) to ask if they would donate songs or allow songs to be sold would be a huge project. If artists were donating, I'd expect maybe a few thousand songs.

        To top it off, the labels own the recordings more than the artists in most cases (unless they get a sweet contract).

    • Re:And uh... (Score:3, Informative)

      by antic ( 29198 )
      The artists are most likely donating their music. When I was in the UK, there was a CD insert in a newspaper that supported OxFam and included the similar artists (Coldplay, etc).

      "Paying to download from BigNoiseMusic.com seems like a good idea when you know your money is going to help some of the world's poorest people."
      Chris Martin, Coldplay

      They launch in a couple of days, so the site is nearly void of FAQ-type information.
      • So where does the other 65p/89p go?

        Oxfam administration costs?

        • Record companies, OD2, etc. The usual crap!

          I'm not suggesting that it's wrong to want to know the distribution of payment (I want to know too), just that the artists here will have donated their work in this case.

        • Servers cost money. Co-location facilities cost money. Bandwith costs money. Staff to run the site cost money.

  • Formats? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eofpi ( 743493 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:38PM (#9233499) Homepage
    The real question is what formats do they support, and what kind(s) of DRM are used.

    • Re:Formats? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jon Chatow ( 25684 ) * <slashdot@jdforrester.org> on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:44PM (#9233540) Homepage
      Given that it's a repackaged OD2 service, WMA.

    • Re:Formats? (Score:2, Informative)

      by desplesda ( 742182 )
      Whatever DRM the labels tell them to use. Oxfam's using their music, after all.

    • Re:Formats? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      no, i think the real Q is how much good can they do with the money they raise?

    • Re:Formats? (Score:5, Informative)

      by AndrewRUK ( 543993 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:59PM (#9233623)
      From looking at the site, it's impossible (as yet) to tell, since they're not actually launching until the 26th (this Wednesday) and it doesn't have much detail available yet.

      However, from other sites using the same back-end system (OD2 [ondemanddistribution.com]), it doesn't look too promising - when I try any of them, I get a message saying "The site you have tried to enter requires Internet Explorer 5 (or better) with Windows Media Player 7 (or better) on Windows XP, 2000, Me or 98."

      We won't know for sure for a few days, but it doesn't look promising.

  • Giving is good. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Nikkodemus ( 763778 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:40PM (#9233517)
    This is more like it, I'd nearly feel good about using this service. Cool.

  • It's OD2, that means... (Score:5, Informative)

    by ProudClod ( 752352 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:49PM (#9233569)
    Windows only, IE only - judging by the other services they run.

  • p? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Joystickit ( 529613 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:55PM (#9233611)
    The real question is what the hell is a p? Is that like a gil, or something?

  • Helping the poor and the not-so-poor too (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Roland Piquepaille ( 780675 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @06:59PM (#9233624)
    Tracks will cost between 75p and 99p, with 10p going to Oxfam. Acts featured include Coldplay and George Michael.

    "Artists will see their music help some of the poorest people in the world," Oxfam's Adrian Lovett said.

    10p for the poor, a large portion of 75p to 99p to the record companies, a itty bit of the rest to Big Noise and the artists.

    In short, helping the poor helps the record companies. Just give 10p to the poors in your area, or to the local charity, you'll feel better...

    • I was going to say something like that (Score:5, Interesting)

      by KhalidBoussouara ( 768934 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @07:03PM (#9233650) Homepage
      So I'll post what I was going to say as a reply. My post details each option (buying or giving the money directly to charity) and what benefits the latter option brings to you.

      Imagine you have 7.50GBP.

      You could buy 10 songs from the service. Oxfam gets 0.75. The artists get hardly anything. You get a crappy WMA file infested with DRM.

      or

      You download 10 songs from the internet and donate half the money you were going to spend directly to oxfam. Oxfam receives 3.50GBP (500% increase). You recieve a high quality audio file which will work on a variety of systems and contains no DRM.

      Which would you choose? For legal reasons, I will not provide an answer. Of course most people will choose option 2 and keep the money for themselves but that's not the point. If you really want to help a charity there is always a better option than bowing down to a company.

      • Re:I was going to say something like that (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        MODS ON CRACK

        How is the parent a troll post. The post does not attempt to condone music piracy or discourage donation to charity. It is merely a follow up on the grand parent topic which is expressing the disgust at the fact that companies use the promise of charity to maximise profits while the charities receive minimal amounts.
      • The other scenarios... some of the songs are 99p each.

        That means you can download 10 tracks for 9.90

        Many albums contain more than 10 tracks.

        So I would rather go to the shop, but the physical CD for 9.99 (a massive 9p extra) and probably get more tracks for my money.
      • Or just go to the Oxfam shop and buy some CD's from them with your tenner.
    • "Artists will see their music help some of the poorest people in the world," Oxfam's Adrian Lovett said.

      Funny, I thought artists were some of the poorest people in the world...

  • I feel like a mineral resource. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 23, 2004 @07:03PM (#9233653)
    I am a musician. Always have been.
    Make albums. Record other peoples. etc.

    I support Oxfam, but I am starting to feel like some kind of object. Everything I make will probably end up in some kind of big discount sale. A few more years and it will be commonplace to get media with a thousand records on it. Probably as a free gift along with your petrol.

    It makes records seem like the free coupons you get when you buy the right brand of detergant.

    It's kinda sad.
    • It's the same for us geeks who write software. Information is a commodity like sugar. It's the 21st century, I guess you'll just have to deal with it.

    • And your point is....? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NotQuiteReal ( 608241 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @09:14PM (#9234322) Journal
      Mostly what people do is live and die. If your "work" makes it to a give-away disc o-music consider yourself lucky.

      Most people who labor in a "service" market leave no mark. Most of the software I have written in my life doesn't or will not have any hardware to run it on any more.

      If you get paid for your work and not copies of your work you will be better off in the long run, since, (to paraphrase), in the long run, we are all dead anyhow.

      Enjoy what you do. Make a living at it if you are lucky, get wealthy at it if you are absurdly lucky.

      • Excuse me?

        You did get paid for your work (that didn't leave a mark), did you not? If you laboured 40 hours a week for a year and wrote a piece of software, would you choose for it to have been included on a free software compilation if it meant that you got paid nothing for your work? Or would you pocket the money and let the software sit in profitable obscurity and enjoyed the fact you could pay your rent/mortgage?

        If not for copies of their work, how do you propose artists get paid? Until you've done
    • I am a software programmer. Always have been.
      Make programs. Review other peoples ones. etc.

      I support OSS, but I am starting to feel like some kind of object. Everything I make will probably end up in some kind of big discount sale. A few more years and it will be commonplace to get media with a thousand programs on it. Probably as a free gift along with your petrol.

      It makes programs seem like the free coupons you get when you buy the right brand of detergant.

      [wait! It already does that! Guess what? The

  • Please be nice the oxfam box. - it runs on redhat (Score:5, Informative)

    by akbkhome ( 564173 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @07:08PM (#9233674) Homepage
    As one of the people who help maintain oxfam.org.uk - please be nice to the server - The server runs linux/apache/php combo (although the main pages are plain html).

    Unfortunatly the main server is scheduled for an upgrade - to a loadbalanced combo, rather than the current single box. (which has not happened yet) as it is currently quite heavily loaded. - especially when UK wakes up..

    Dont forget there are nice big Donate Now buttons on all the pages. (It's a very good cause) - with great people who use open source alot..
    • It might be worth looking at thttpd (or some other lightweight nonblocking IO based server, there are quite a few) and running PHP as a FastCGI daemon; you get significantly better performance serving static files, keep the httpd's lightweight by keeping PHP out of them, and can loadbalance the PHP stuff across servers should you wish. Any database servers will thank you too, since it helps keep the number of PHP instances down.

      The main thing holding us [newzbin.com] back is the lack of decent URL rewriting support in

  • I know where my money is going. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AC-x ( 735297 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @07:16PM (#9233720)

    10p each track to charity is all well and good if the songs were say 20-30p each, but 75p to 1 quid? I don't think so. I may as well just go into Oxfam and buy a couple of quids worth of old cloths or whatnot, then all the money goes to Oxfam.

    Until a digital music service offers me MP3s at a reasonable price all my money is going to the Russians [allofmp3.com]

    • VAT can be as high as 25% in old Europe

      Sales tax is rarely beyond 7% in the U.S. (and even that is too high). Some states have NO tax (NH, DE, AK, others).

      Instead of complaining about the entrepreneurs or charities who want to make music available to you in a convenient manner, please vote por politicians who advocate lower taxes, or kindly shut up.



      • Registered charities don't have to pay VAT (sales tax). Presumably tax will be factored into this service, as most of the money goes to the record companies, but Oxfam will be able to get a VAT return from the Government on their share.
    • Why not do both? If you're going to buy the music, buy it from an organization that will donate some of your money to Oxfam. If you want to support Oxfam, give them your money directly. The two are not mutually exclusive ways of donating money.
    • then all the money goes to Oxfam Er, no. Most of the money goes on renting the premises and taxes. Charity shops actually make startlingly small profits, especially when you consider they don't pay for their staff or their stock.

  • Europeans get a raw deal again (Score:5, Informative)

    by Peter Cooper ( 660482 ) on Sunday May 23, 2004 @07:23PM (#9233764) Homepage Journal
    When iTunes Music Store came out selling tracks for 99 cents a pop, I prophesized that any European version would sell tracks for 99 pence per track instead of the equivalent of 99 US cents, or even 99 EU cents. All of the stores which are coming out so far have proven this true. Let's see what Apple does, but I can almost guarantee they'll go in at the same price point.

    As a comparison, 79 pence is approx. $1.38, and 99 pence is approx. $1.74. With most UK digital music stores hovering around the 99 pence mark, that means Brits are being charged 74% more than Americans on average. Oh well, I guess nothing changes, and as typical we'll all keel over and accept it. If UK salaries were 74% higher than American ones you couldn't complain, but it seems to be the other way around, still.
    • Straight dope has an excellent article on this :
      The Straight Dope: Why do prices end in .99? [straightdope.com]

      To extrapolate slightly from the article, just imagine the sales pitch as being able to buy the track "For under a dollar!", "For under a euro!", "For under a pound!", or even "For under a Dinar!". For a Kuwaiti Dinar, this is approximately $3.35 - eek!

      Only to the latter the expression would probably be recognized as being expensive. To the rest of us who hover around relatively low values, it seems cheap either
    • I prophesized that any European version would sell tracks for 99 pence per track instead of the equivalent of 99 US cents, or even 99 EU cents.

      The rumours I've read (here [macrumors.com] and here [appleinsider.com] for example) say the tracks will be EUR1.29, which is around GBP0.86, which is around USD1.54.

      I hope you're wrong, and the tracks are going to be 13p cheaper than your 99p prediction, but it's still 30p more expensive than the US price.

  • really in europe ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 23, 2004 @07:32PM (#9233806)
    "the service will be available across Europe."

    And even can't tell us the price in euros ?
    Or they start in GB and plan to expand later ? But why starting with a 60M people market when they are more than 250M people in euroland ?
    good luck

  • If you really want to help: (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Go here [allofmp3.com] to purchase music and give the difference to Oxfam.

    Not only will you be getting clean MP3s, you'll be able to help more people with the money you save.
    • Last time that site was mentioned here it was offline for nearly a month. I had five CDs in the encode queue when the site was slashdotted last month and I was only able to start downloading again little more than a week ago. Had great service with them for months (years already?) and one cover story blows them out of the water for more than three weeks. I'd prefer if you'd go back to keeping this our little secret... at least until I get the rest of my Shakespeare's Sister and Moloko.
      • They went through a very rough patch for the week or two after they were slashdotted, but I've been using them again now consistently for several weeks and their service is back to normal or better.

        Given the impact that a slashdotting would have on a site of this nature, and the presumably permenant increase in traffic I don't think they've done too badly at all
      • Just steal it from someone else then?
  • Obviously the RIAA and their friends, "the nice people with lawyers" (hint hint) don't want to lose money so how long is it untill they post Oxfam out the market? I can't say I donate alot to Oxfam (maybe 10p or whatever my change is after buying something gets dropped into their box) but it seems to me like no company is going to just let them wander into the market(along with napster all though no one would use that any more) and let them take a nice big chunk of it.

    Not to mention I doubt many people wil
    • Depends on who you call Dave McNobody of course.
      Personally, I wouldn't call George Michael or Colplay nobodies, but opinions differ, of course.

      Another thing you would know if you had just RTFA, is that the RIAA gets it's share of all the music sold.

  • as they are a charity shop (Score:3, Interesting)

    by advocate_one ( 662832 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @03:03AM (#9235611)
    can I donate my unwanted "legal" music downloads to them to sell on at a cheap rate??? like I can do with my unwanted CDs, DVDs, books and the like...
  • "...the web site's music selection is expected to consist entirely of songs written by Bob Geldof."
  • Isn't it Windows only, and Media player only?

    I sure wish Apple would open up over the pond and give OD2 come decent competition for mutliplatform..

    • There is WMP for the Mac too, but both of them are not available for Linux, BeOS, etc.
      iTMS & OD2 both use consumer-hostile technologies, while there are other, consumer-friendly, possibilities to protect music against illegal copying.

      DRM technologies like MS DRM, PlayFair, Key2Audio, etc. are useful for companies that want to sell you a different copy of the same song/album for every music device you own (CD player, PC, iPod, ...).

      Watermarking technologies are stronger than WMA or iTunes DRM but they
  • Surely the thought of helping starving artists who can only afford one Learjet should be enough to make people buy music, rather than solving world poverty?

  • This is nothing new (Score:2, Informative)

    by Danj2k ( 123765 )
    If you guys actually read the article, it says it's just another OD2 (On Demand Distribution) outlet. There's nothing new or exciting about that. I guess it's nice that some of the money is going to charity instead of lining record companies' pockets, but when you get right down to it this is the same old WMA based service that's being peddled by MSN, HMV, Coca-Cola and a million others. Pity there doesn't seem to be a way to un-DRM version 9 WMA files at the moment (FreeMe doesn't work any more, it seems).

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