New Oz music scheme: unlimited music no longer pipe dream

David Swan
Monday, 17 August 2009 19:40

Your IT - Entertainment

The way you listen to music is about to change… for a monthly fee. A new service from Bandit.fm provides unlimited music from the four major labels, but will the oddly titled company swindle your money, or provide hours of listening goodness for a measly 10 bucks?

It sounds promising. For a very reasonable $10 a month, subscribers will be granted unlimited access to music from all four major labels in a new streaming service to be launched here in October.

According to SMH, “Sony Music will operate the $9.99-a-month subscription site on Banfit.fm on behalf of the four major labels, which means customers will have access to potentially hundreds of thousands of tunes.”

Although this will likely lure a few people who purchase music online anyway, it certainly remains to be seen whether the new service will bait any one of Australia’s hundreds of thousands of illegal music downloaders, who are already techno-savvy and many, it seems, without a conscience. The only real successful online service to date has been iTunes, but this success can be attributed mainly to the ubiquity of the iPod and the interoperability with one another, something the new Bandit.FM service cannot boast.

As the service is solely a streaming one, this in itself will provide its own set of limitations. Music won’t be owned, so how will I play it in my car, or lend it to a friend? If it can’t be on a disc or on my iPod, will I be restricted to sitting at my computer or near another Wi-Fi device whenever I want to enjoy some Radiohead? And, all that music is set to challenge even the mightiest of download limits, which is especially disappointing given that after all that bandwidth use, you won’t even own any of the music.

So, is this really the way of the future? Read on to find out.

CONTINUED Page 2