Topic: B&W and Peter Gabriel download service

[Tim]

Interesting

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/05/19/dlmusic119.xml

Peter Gabriel has launched a new song download service for music purists.

The subscription-based music club will offer users one new, exclusive album per month, delivered in a "lossless" music format that provides CD-quality sound, one of the best recording formats currently available.

The service promises to offer subscribers an eclectic mix of music from established acts as well as up-and-coming artists. It's aimed at music aficionados and audiophiles who value high-quality recordings, but who aren't currently catered for by online music services. Most download sites sell songs that have been digitally compressed to reduce the size of the file and make it quicker to download, but this process also diminishes the audio quality of the recording. Lossless tracks, by contrast, are optimised for fast downloads without compromising sound quality.
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The music club is a partnership between Gabriel and Bowers & Wilkins, a speaker manufacturer. Bowers & Wilkins covered the cost of the artists' recording time at Gabriel's studios, and will retain the musical license for each album for two months, before returning it to the artists.

Subscribers will be able to download the DRM-free albums to iTunes and transfer them to their iPods, or burn them onto CD. Printable album artwork and sleeve notes will also be included.

"For many people today, music has become a background noise or commodity," said Dan Haikin, brand director at Bowers & Wilkins. "The MP3 revolution has placed convenience over quality. Music Club will redress this by creating exclusive live albums from a hand-picked selection of leading musicians as high-quality downloads."

Membership of the music club starts from £23.95 for a six-month subscription, and there are also video interviews and podcasts available on the site. Artists who have already agreed to record albums for the service include Little Axe, Mondo Cane, Gwyneth Herbert and Dub Colossus.

Gabriel has established a reputation as a digital pioneer. He co-founded We7.com, which allows users to download and stream music for free in exchange for watching adverts, and The Filter, a personalised entertainment-recommendation service.

Despite the proliferation of legal music download sites such as Tesco Digital and iTunes, sales of digital music are falling. According to research group The Leading Question, the proportion of music fans regularly buying downloads fell from 16 per cent in 2006 to 14 per cent in 2007.