Irish phone provider Eircom launches its Internet music store

May 3, 2004

A few days ago, the Irish telephone provider Eircom has officially launched its online music store titled 'The Music Club'. This is one of first music download stores available to Irish consumers. It is provided through OD2, which
runs many other online music shops acrossEurope and offers a catalogue covering 8,500 artists with around 250,000 songs to choose from. While there are many other music download stores in Europe, they are not open to Irish consumers due to the way licensing laws vary from country to country across Europe.

Unlike the popular iTunes service in the US, Eircom's music store uses a credits system where the user must purchase a bundle of credits prior to purchasing music, much like a prepaid calling card account. Credits can be purchased in a choice of 4 bundles as well as obtained as part of a monthly subscription. Users can stream music for 1 credit per song, temporarily download it for between 10 and 30 credits or purchase it for between 99 and 189 credits. Purchased music may be recorded to CD, however temporary downloads cannot be transferred to CD or any player and expire after a year.

Called The Music Club, the new site allows users to legally download tracks from the Internet and burn them onto a CD or portable device. The site also offers facilities to stream music or to "temporarily" download music.

The move marks the launch of one of the first Internet music stores usable by people in Ireland. More established e-music stores, such as Apple's iTunes or Napster, are not yet open to non-US users. Meanwhile, here in Europe a number of Internet music shops have launched in recent months such as MSN music, MyCokeMusic, MTV and others. But since music licensing laws in Europe are nation-specific, these shops are not yet open to Irish users.

It is nice to see that a music download store is finally available in my country, however music prices are rather expensive when compared with the US iTunes service.
Most of the latest hits cost 189 credits (about €1.89) and abums seem to range around 1249 credits to 1668 credits. These prices are still a fair bit cheaper than in high street shops in Ireland where singles typically cost €5 and albums vary around €16.50 to €23. However like any other music download service, the user would need to record the music to CD for CD/Hi-Fi playback as well as tolerate the side-effects of Windows Media Audio.

Feel free to discuss and read more about online music shops and other Internet based music services on our Music Downloads, P2P & Legal Issues Forum.

Source: ElectricNews.net