bandit.fm, glimpse into major label thinking?
As nerds who like to keep your pulse on trends in digital downloading (hey, I'm one too) I thought I'd pass this along.
bandit.fm is an Australian-only (OK, New Zealand also) digital download store, Sony-owned but with all the other major labels too. At the time of the Sony entry into eMusic I speculated about their strategy with bandit.fm because I find it hard to imagine they'd put such an effort into something for just little old us. The prices are about the same as iTunes but in my experience with a slightly lesser catalogue. I have bought a few things from there, mostly using special offers they have fairly often ie. buy an album and get $20 credit. I did recently accrue $30 in credits from codes they were giving away on chip packets. I don't eat THAT MANY chips but they gave you $3.38 (the price of two individual songs at the iTunes-set standard price of $1.69) for each code.
So anyway to get to the point, they have now introduced a range of subscription plans.
Essentially:
$10.99 AUD (about $10 USD) a month for unlimited full length streaming. All labels/distributors.
$15.99 AUD ($14.70 USD) for $40 worth of downloads, 3 months payable up front. "Excludes Universal and some indies" (FAQ says more than 80% of content available)
$15.99 AUD for the unlimited streaming in plan 1 plus $20 download credit. 3 months upfront.
No credit rollover. For context, the usual price of an album on iTunes/Bandit.fm is $16.99 and single track $1.69. (yeah, even though the AUD is strong against the greenback right now we pay a fair bit more than the US iTunes store comparatively. OTOH, eMusic charges in USD so you have to go with the currency flow. Swings and roundabouts.)
So ... it's interesting. Streaming doesn't really suit my personal habits, the second plan would be my choice and I can see how it might entice me to actually buy things (things I can't get on eMu anyway) I just preview, think about and then not pull the trigger on (making sense as a business plan.) But the 3 month up front thing puts me off, I mean you're not actually getting a discount which is the usual hook for longer term commitment plans.
Anyway, as I said we might be being used as guinea pigs here. We don't get any of the other streaming/download sites here so I can't really compare its value to those.
What say you, music industry entrail readers?
bandit.fm is an Australian-only (OK, New Zealand also) digital download store, Sony-owned but with all the other major labels too. At the time of the Sony entry into eMusic I speculated about their strategy with bandit.fm because I find it hard to imagine they'd put such an effort into something for just little old us. The prices are about the same as iTunes but in my experience with a slightly lesser catalogue. I have bought a few things from there, mostly using special offers they have fairly often ie. buy an album and get $20 credit. I did recently accrue $30 in credits from codes they were giving away on chip packets. I don't eat THAT MANY chips but they gave you $3.38 (the price of two individual songs at the iTunes-set standard price of $1.69) for each code.
So anyway to get to the point, they have now introduced a range of subscription plans.
Essentially:
$10.99 AUD (about $10 USD) a month for unlimited full length streaming. All labels/distributors.
$15.99 AUD ($14.70 USD) for $40 worth of downloads, 3 months payable up front. "Excludes Universal and some indies" (FAQ says more than 80% of content available)
$15.99 AUD for the unlimited streaming in plan 1 plus $20 download credit. 3 months upfront.
No credit rollover. For context, the usual price of an album on iTunes/Bandit.fm is $16.99 and single track $1.69. (yeah, even though the AUD is strong against the greenback right now we pay a fair bit more than the US iTunes store comparatively. OTOH, eMusic charges in USD so you have to go with the currency flow. Swings and roundabouts.)
So ... it's interesting. Streaming doesn't really suit my personal habits, the second plan would be my choice and I can see how it might entice me to actually buy things (things I can't get on eMu anyway) I just preview, think about and then not pull the trigger on (making sense as a business plan.) But the 3 month up front thing puts me off, I mean you're not actually getting a discount which is the usual hook for longer term commitment plans.
Anyway, as I said we might be being used as guinea pigs here. We don't get any of the other streaming/download sites here so I can't really compare its value to those.
What say you, music industry entrail readers?
Comments
I was interested to read that labels have created their own pages on bandit.fm 9which I hadn't noticed), eMusic really trained me to pay attention to the label and explore within it, which I had never thought about at all before. The lack of being able to click on the label name and be taken to all their releases does irk on iTunes etc.
But given the fact major label backed download services usually have the least user friendly sites in the world, they get points for sort of trying to present an attractive package.