Skype to launch a music platform
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Remember last December where Skype started selling ring tones culled from Madonna’s or Green Day’s songs? Well, it is broadening its catalog. EMI now allows Skype to sell its entire song catalog as ring tones and more important, as downloads.
Is Skype turning into a cousin of Apple iTunes? Yes, however with this big difference: The deal has been agreed on a worldwide basis and not on a country-by-country basis, said Times online. It’s a kind of U-turn change, as payments from song copyrights could now be collected globally.
It’s funny to see how EMI is turned on by Skype popularity explosion, although Skype couple of founders, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, are also responsible for the KaZaA peer-to-peer file-sharing platform, one of the most hated softwares of the RIAA members, the US music lobby, where EMI is a major member.
Hopefully for EMI, if Skype users stick with the given toolkit, they wouldn’t be able to record any song they’ll listen too. Selling through Skype would then very cost-efficient. No DRM to add, to manage or to debug.
But unfortunately, if users are going off the rack, they would install some applications primarily designed to save Skype calls, like Skylook or Hot recorder (see 4 ways to record VoIP conversations).
But, the deal is all good for EMI, with a partner that garners over 80 million members and that is adding 250,000 new users a day, as Skype CEO Niklas Zennström said to the Financial Times. Last week, EMI also announced their quarterly financial results. A growth by 150%. Impressive figure but in detail, the music major company seems a tiny 5.5% revenues, coming from online sells, mostly ring tones.
Apr 24, 2006 | By Nuno
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