[The News Bot]

Virgin has pledged to tackle pirates as part of a deal to offer music to its broadband customers.
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[rovex33]

Yeah, THAT will work.. (scrubs Virgin off the list of potential ISPs).

[Steven]

You're not forced to sign to such a deal if you do not want to

Most strange

[rovex33]

No but the full text of the release implies they will monitor usage and act accordingly. No thanks, got enough of that with BT.

[Noggin1980]

If they get every label on board and price it at £15 a month then it will be a fantastic service, as it stands it's crap, one label and a price of say £20 a month doesn't compete with anything, especially when you concider that Microsofts zune pass in the US is $15 and has all the labels.

[Steven]

Originally Posted by rovex33

No but the full text of the release implies they will monitor usage and act accordingly. No thanks, got enough of that with BT.

Ahh, well they will be doing that The point of the deal is that in return, Virgin will actively ensure that the Universal music subscribers download are not then uploaded onto file sharing sites

For the cost of a "couple of albums" to freely download and use music is intriguing... I suspect that means a cost hitting £40 which will put a lot of people off. Virgin have recognised they need to get more labels on board to make the venture worthwhile. Personally I love Spotify and a mobile version is coming so that's that now

[Noggin1980]

Even with all the labels on board you arn't going to see anyone paying £40 a month for the service. Sure people who want to be legit will pay for one month and download everything they want and then cancel but £40 would be far far too much as a monthly fee.

None of the subscription services have come close to getting it right yet and this one needs to change alot to get there as well.

I like the Microsoft model best but of course we can't get it here and it's ruined by restrictive DRM, The napster model is decent but again ruined by restrictive DRM and you don't get to keep any of the music when you cancel and it's worse value than the microsoft one. The Virgin one atm sounds like it will be too expensive and doesn't have the content, The fact you can keep the music is great but that probably swings too far in the consumers direction and means people will only pay for one month unless the subscription is low enough that you want to keep it to get new releases each month, you need to be down at £15 for that imo.

Also concidering how unbeliveably horrible virgins VStuff service is I have no faith in them releaseing a decent service. Shame I was excited about Vstuff, sounds so good on paper, soul crushingly bad performance in practice.