Monday 5 April 2004

Cheap Downloads

Not that I condone wasting money on DRM-infested MP3s, but if you are into that kinda thing, it seems upstart Wippit are throwing the first punch in what looks like a very mucky price war.

These files have generally been selling for around 99c (60p) in the US - via sites like iTunes' iShop. In the UK, the conventional wisdom has been to replace the 'c' with a 'p', thus harvesting almost 100 of your British pence for 60p's worth of digital file.

Enter Wippit.

Never the strongest or most widely known product - certainly not up there with Napster or Coke (who run MyCokeMusic.com). They have lit the flames of a price war by charging folk 29p per file.

Is this good? Time will tell. For every forward thinking initiative in the music world, there's some pigheaded curmudgeon in charge of something he shouldn't be who's intent on making sure nothing productive ever gets done.

In some ways, I hope this works out well. In others, I doubt I'd ever pay for a downloadable file like this, because of the DRM infection and the fact that they're putting my favourite haunts out of business. How exactly do you buy a used album this way?

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