BBC To Launch Music Download Store 107
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?"
Publicly funded? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the BBC is publicly funded by the British people, why the hell are they charging for their content? Isn't that a bit absurd?
Same thing goes for PBS here in the States, though I've got slightly (very slightly) more ambivalence towards them because they receive such a minuscule amount from the government and they are always stretched on budget. But still, PBS shouldn't be charging for content...
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You wouldn't pay for Mr. Rogers on Demand?
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"But still, neither PBS nor BBC should be charging for content..."
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Re:Publicly funded? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, but would you want your taxes/gifts/donations etc going towards royalties to some music company? I would presume that the BBC doesnt have complete control over some, or most of the music they would be distributing.
And on the other side, if they can make more money from this, it means they can A: put their normal funding to better use, or B: not use as much.
However, having it ad-funded, will inevitably make the advertisers have more control over its existance.
And as for PBS, I think they should be allowed to charge for content in certain cases, like VHS/DVD/CD copies of shows as they have already put their income into making the show, not duplication and distribution of discs.
Re:Publicly funded? (Score:5, Informative)
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."
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The same EMI who dared to sell copy protected CDs on certain areas of planet which they think they are likely to rip their content. Speaking about racial profiling and discrimination.
If there are people hoping it will be an international store which you may use just because it is "BBC Worldwide", don't hope too much.
I don't understand why companies try so hard to drive people to piracy.
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I guess it was easier for them to issue a blanket charge instead of trying to suss out between stuff they own the whole copyright to (which is funded by the British "telly tax"), and stuff that they only have partial copyright to (e.g. stuff they hired an outside artist or corp to compose and produce).
Still dumb, but that's what happens when a multi-billion-pound corporation gets lazy.
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Well don't rule it out entirely, the deals arent all set yet... I dont see why they couldnt have the normal ad-funded stuff Mon-Sat, and then maybe the (entirely hassle/ads) free stuff on Sunday, or an entire station(s) devoted to the free stuff, I'm sure that whatever archives they have are already fairly well split into one pile or another, the "safe for anything" and the "check the rights" before playing piles, not very hard to go from there.
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You say that you're in the US, so you're not funding them; they certainly have the right to charge you.
As for charging the British... well, this certainly doesn't sound like something that comes under the remit of the TV license fee, so charging users is the only other way to get funding for it.
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Actually we in the US are funding them, but I suspect to much lesser degree. PBS (who in part get funded by the US taxpayer) buys the rights to view BBC content.
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Actually, the Beeb does get money from the US viewer: BBC America (among others) is considered a semi-premium channel in most cable and satellite packages, which means the rights are paid for by either Cable/Sat corp or by the viewer directly. Also, there are some rather distinctly American-oriented commercials (for instance: how many UK car commercials tout miles-per-gallon fuel efficiencies, and displays the sales prices in dollars?)
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Re:Publicly funded? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, there are some rather distinctly American-oriented commercials (for instance: how many UK car commercials tout miles-per-gallon fuel efficiencies, and displays the sales prices in dollars?)
The big difference here is that there are *no* adverts on the BBC TV or radio channels *at all*...
Yup, no adverts. You know that TV Licence we pay? Well, you know how it's quite a lot less than you pay for cable or satellite in the US? We don't get adverts on our BBC channels. Doesn't it suck to *pay* to watch TV and still get bombarded with ads?
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Actually, we still have local broadcast channels that cost nothing - perfectly free. The Portland Metro (Oregon) area has about six or seven of them.
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Actually, we still have local broadcast channels that cost nothing - perfectly free. The Portland Metro (Oregon) area has about six or seven of them.
Do they have adverts?
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Most do, some do not. And overall, to be honest, I'll take the adverts over having to pay for the privilege of owning a television, and paying up by governmental force. It's drop-easy to excise them from my computer (or skip right past them with the DVR), where at least I still have a choice in the matter.
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It's great for films as you can sit down and watch uninterrupted, but as some have pointed out, you have no choice in paying this 'tax' if you own any equipment capable of receiving BBC channels whether you watch them or not, which is totally unfai
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Yup, no adverts. You know that TV Licence we pay? Well, you know how it's quite a lot less than you pay for cable or satellite in the US? We don't get adverts on our BBC channels. Doesn't it suck to *pay* to watch TV and still get bombarded with ads?
Whilst the BBC can be pretty good with no adverts (well, if you ignore all the self-promotion for BBC material they still do), the problem is that if you do want other cable or satellite TV channels (since the BBC don't show everything), you still have to pay fo
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if you do want other cable or satellite TV channels
But I don't, because they're all shit. And they have loud, intrusive adverts, which only adds to the shitness.
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Good for you. But the argument that the BBC licence fee is great, if you want the BBC and only the BBC, isn't much of an argument when it's compulsory for all.
You said "Doesn't it suck to *pay* to watch TV and still get bombarded with ads?" - well it sucks even more to have to pay twice to watch TV, as well as adverts, whether you want the BBC or not. How the quality of the BBC compares to other TV companies is a separate issue.
(Not to mention that the only way to get the older classic BBC programmes is on
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As it happens, I *don't* pay anything at all to watch TV. I don't need a TV licence. I have a perfectly ordinary TV, which I use to watch DVDs, play video games on, and watch stuff I've downloaded from the Internet.
Re:Publicly funded? (Score:4, Insightful)
However I don't buy that the worldwide unit doesn't get any benefit from the tv licence. Hell, the fact it was British licence money that funded those records means that we've paid for them to have those recordings and now we're going to get charged again if we want something from there.
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Another reason for those is that they don't have to support Linux or Mac since it won't use tax payer money. I suspect this will be a windows thing.
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They don't really support Mac and Linux now, and haven't (that I can remember). Even before the advent of iPlayer, radio was available via WMP or *shudder* Realplayer.
But the tech which "supports" Mac and Linux now is what they'd have done anyway if they only supported Windows.
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... radio was available via WMP or *shudder* Realplayer.
But the tech which "supports" Mac and Linux now is what they'd have done anyway if they only supported Windows.
Realplayer has always supported mac and as both wmp and realplayer have fairly widely used codecs getting either to play under linux has never been a problem (realmedia may even be avalible on linux (not that id touch the thing)
as for the current iplayer, as a linux user and a British citizen i realize that they have other priorities but i am happy to use the flash or script versions until work on the mac & linux versions is complete.
Re:Publicly funded? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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The codec is proprietary, so Helix player cannot actually be used to play the content.
The current Linux version does not work with Pulseaudio, which many distros are moving to and which seems to be the future of Linux audio.
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The baseless "hate" against Real Player as they are clean for years gives those MS bribed officials ideas of WMP only streaming etc.
shut it macboy, the hate against realplayer is because it bombards you with ads and writes itself to your start up services (on windows machines) and is generally an anoying piece of crap.
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).
There is realplayer for linux, but last time i used it it was just as bad as the windows version.
As for the helix player is an open source player that last time i checked could NOT support realplayer.
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.
thus proving that the BBC did support everything by streaming in realplayer. The truth is tho that WMA is much better suppor
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Keep hoping for Mac/Linux when they go with Windows Media technology. Remember I said it when you monkey with some unsupported junk, I wonder how will you get past Wmedia DRM. Boot to windows right?
Real is available to anything having 100+ Mhz CPU. I don't mention devices or operating systems. Look to anything in production, Real is supported on it.
Re:Publicly funded? (Score:4, Informative)
I suspect BBC Worldwide will pay the BBC for a license to sell this content.
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overlords (Score:2)
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They could be charging for the continued storage and bandwidth needed to capacitate the service.
In that way, the service could be self-supporting (as in not requiring more funding from outside sources to run).
Or at least, that's what I hope (seeing as no pricing information was given).
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Why should the British people give things away for free outside Britain?
Besides, the BBC don't own everything that has been produced or broadcast by them. Often the institution is supposed to provide a platform for young talents to develop (e.g. world class comedy) or generate high quality news and current affairs reporting (which *is* given away free globally).
I'm not a huge fan of the license fee; there doesn't seem to be much public service broadcasting at the moment and the news does get a bit of a pro-
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The thing I don't understand is this... If the BBC is publicly funded by the British people, why the hell are they charging for their content? Isn't that a bit absurd? Same thing goes for PBS here in the States, though I've got slightly (very slightly) more ambivalence towards them because they receive such a minuscule amount from the government and they are always stretched on budget. But still, PBS shouldn't be charging for content...
Like most everywhere else, BBC and PBS already charge for physical copies of most, if not all of their series and shows, not only does it increase revenue for the organization, which is required for anything that broadcasts anything, but it also will work to cover server costs and rights for the product. You still pay for a copy of the original office, why wouldn't you pay for a radio session that the BBC had previously not released?
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International community tries so hard to fund them (really!) and yet they don't allow us to pay for their great content and have it.
It is getting way more surreal every day. I know americans who would pay to get iPlayer content right now and they are people which Hollywood couldn't sell a single byte.
BBC can actually make profit and wouldn't need tax payers money if they figure out what "putting your content to internet" means.
About ad supported streaming? Virgin of UK tried it, failed.
As a pessimist, let m
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Access to BBC's entire archive of recorded music is access to a considerable amount of music history. Although BBC is publicly funded, all that content has been previously exclusive and to have all of it suddenly available means someone is paying for it somewhere.
That, or people are just looking to make money as usual. Either way, it's up to you whether or not you want to give up some of your own money to hear exclusive conte
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> If the BBC is publicly funded by the British people, why the hell are they charging for their content? Isn't that a bit absurd?
Because most of the content is not *owned* by the BBC. The TV license fee covers the cost of obtaining (either commissioning or buying in from overseas) and broadcasting TV/radio. If you want the DVD then you pay extra for that, although I am sure that these sales help keep down the cost of the license fee.
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I agree. Another example is the way that the BBC flogs a lot of its classic shows off to other networks like (IIRC) UKTV Gold.
So first I've had to pay my BBC licence, then I have to pay to get UKTV Gold, then I have to watch loads of adverts on top... all this for old content! Shouldn't it get cheaper as it gets older? Instead I'm having to pay three times.
Only music? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have the HHGTG books, I taped the TV series from PBS, and bought the DVD of the movie, but I have never heard the original radio play. Will it be available at this new BBC store? If it is, I want a copy!
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According to Wikipedia (so it must be true, right?) "Special editions of the Primary and Secondary Phases have been announced by the BBC for release in November 2008. These have, according to the BBC, been given "a thorough clean-up and remaster" by Dirk Maggs. ":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(radio_series) [wikipedia.org]
If I was a betting man I'd say that once they've sold a pile of them they'll be rebroadcast on Radio 4 or BBC7 some time next year...
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It's good BTW.
And if you're trying to cover all the media, don't miss the game [wikipedia.org] which was partly penned by the man himself.
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God damn the "No Tea/Tea" puzzle. Along with every other one in that game.
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Oh, don't forget that the game is freely playable online [bbc.co.uk].
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I am working on the long lost sequel to that game. Where someone forgot to apply the DST patch to the Restaurant At the End of the Universes time servers, thus causing the entire space-time continuum to be not curved, but totally bent. Before the Universe explodes at your pleasure (TM), unfortunately when you are still on Earth, you must buy the new game and hitch a ride back to Magrathea to consult with the mice about the patch. Unfortunately, when you try to download the patch from Microsoft/Sirius Cyb
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Wow, I'd forgotten about the game completely; I played it way, way back on an Apple IIe. My now-drinking age kids were infants! It was a hard game, I could never make it off the earth. I'm better at FPSs (but even then I lack the m4d 5k1LLz some guys had)
Of course, I used the computer at the library to (attempt to) play it; at the time I owned a Trash-80.
As I'm stuck on the wrong side of the pond, I'll have to search the US version of Amazon as I have no idea what the exchange rate is or if they even tale d
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I used to have cassette tapes of the first series. Well it was before teh Intarweb, couldn't download it so I just taped the suckers. Lost now. But I thought the TV series was lame and the movie even more so but the radio series was inspired. The book just doesn't capture it either. I will eagerly grab them if they are available. Even, ahem, pay for them.
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I'm stuck in this third world backwater called the "USA" so I was never given the opportunity to hear them.
How about a way for for non UK people to watch (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd be happy to just watch their damn videos. Hell I'd even pay a small subscription fee to do so. Providing it worked properly on mac and linux.
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We should set up some sort of exchange [thepiratebay.org]. Then you could watch the Beeb and I could watch The Daily Show [thedailyshow.com] without being redirected to Channel 4's DRMed rubbish. [channel4.com] At least they're honest [channel4.com] about how they feel about DRM [drm.info].
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I shouldn't have to go though questionable means to get to content I'm quite willing to pay for.
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Only one question (Score:4, Informative)
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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.
I buy only music that comes on discs because I'm not up to buy music that's of poorer quality for more money.
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Actually it costs less to buy an album on Amazon then to buy a CD. If you were an audiophile you would be talking about SACD or DVD-Audio anyways so obviously you are not. You really should give high bitrate MP3 a chance.
I didn't say CD, I said 'discs.' That means vinyl, DVD-A, SACD, and traditional CD's. I buy some CD's because not everything is available in the other formats these days.
And if you have a CD with, say, 20 songs, and you 'can' buy them online for $0.99 each, that's roughly $20+S/H. Go in to the store and it's between $8-$15 for a CD, more for any of the other formats (unless you find a vinyl at a garage sale or something for a quarter or a buck.
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Questions: (Score:1)
1) What about the BBC radio shows that are older than any conceivable copyright (is it 1926 in the UK as well)? I doubt they'll distribute any, but public domain is public domain.
2) Who on this planet is going to pay for the dubious pleasure of hearing such eardrum-torturing melodies as the intro music to, oh, "Absolutely Fabulous" (Red Dwarf, okay... Dr. Who's original intro score, definitely. But let's face it, there's likely to be an ocean of crap surrounding the rare gems, y'know?)
3) Any hope of the mor
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Well, you can get some of them at http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/churchill_audio.shtml [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Questions: (Score:5, Informative)
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2) Who on this planet is going to pay for the dubious pleasure of hearing such eardrum-torturing melodies as the intro music to, oh, "Absolutely Fabulous"
Dylan's "Wheels on fire" in a version sung by the fabulous Julie Driscoll - I would.
And then there are all the live sessions from the John Peel show - They are priceless. I still have some low quality mono real audio files of Elastica produced by John and downloaded a good few years ago when the Beeb still mounted them on line. I would live to have them in a good quality lossless format.
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the bbc do a lot of live sessions, and quite a few of them produce original content (hell bbc leeds & reading site has a clip of biffy clyro doing an acoustic cover of killing in the name of atm) im hoping this sort is the stuff that will be for sale, and its not just another music store.
GOON SHOW!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Yeah, but that's one episode a week, and there's no saying if it's one I like or not. This way I could buy exactly the episodes I want, maybe - dare I dream it? - put it on my iPod to carry around, play it at work, and so on.
Also, while the Goons are popular enough to be on BBC 7 all the time, other excellent programmes, "The News Quiz", "I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue", "Dead Ringers" and "Whose Line Is It Anyway" being on the top of my list, come and go. It'd be awesome to be able to quickly and quietly sati
Prices (Score:2)
So the BBC tax takes off of people BY THREAT OF PRISON £135-ish a year*, and now that the British public has paid for all the content the BBC are hoarding, they are expected to pay yet again.
I thought the RIAA is an American cartel not a UK one.
* You have to pay this tax even if you never watch the BBC on your tv, instead watching foreign satellite tv etc.
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You paid for the original broadcasting, which also cost money. Now you will be paying for the interim storage and all the work it takes to stream it over the 'net. That costs too, and you haven't paid for it.
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if they do video too... (Score:1)
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Just to say I have all of doctor who.
I think the BBC would like to have all the Doctor Who episodes too! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes [wikipedia.org]
Better way? (Score:1)
Aren't BBC Worldwide big fans of Windows Media? (Score:1, Informative)
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.
It's about time! (Score:2)
wow another music store failure (Score:2)
DRM'd to death like iPlayer (Score:2)
Nothing to see here move along....
It will be DRM'ed to death like iPlayer - which actually *is* BBC content and not some record company's. The the monopolies commission will bitch at them and they will create a rubbish version for Mac/Linux with a quarter of the quality and half the features.
Save yourself the hassle and just buy MP3's from Amazon.
Re:DRM'd to death like iPlayer (Score:4, Informative)
Forget the Beatles sessions.... (Score:1)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/sessions/ [bbc.co.uk]
You can already stream some sessions from this site. Being able to sift through them all is likely to take up years of my life.