The battle for Britain's digital music sector continues to intensify, with Apple facing a broad assortment of competitors in the UK, EMI and Play.com are the latest entrants to the field.
EMI yesterday confirmed plans to offer its own bespoke digital music and media service through its existing website. The major's plans likely include music exploration and social media elements, but it's not yet clear if the store will offer music from other labels through the service.
Competition was already intense in the UK, with Apple facing a slew of services, including looming launches from We7, Amazon, Sky, HMV and intensifying competition from 7digital, eMusic and others.
This grew deeper with this morning's news that UK online music retailer, Play.com's PlayDigital service has reached a deal with all four majors to offer music for sale and download in DRM-free MP3 format.
Announcing the service, Play.com pointed out that, with track prices starting at 65-pence, it offers music more cheaply than iTunes, and makes the company one of three online music retailers offering music free of DRM in a higher quality format.
Wendy Snowdon, head of PlayDigital told Distorted Loop, “With the top 100 tracks available from 65p each compared to 79p on iTunes and albums from 4.99 which is 1 cheaper than iTunes, PlayDigital is the cheapest destination for music downloads."
Meanwhile, fresh research from Ipsos Tempo confirms iTunes is the most well-known US digital music service, but that this still leaves an opportunity for the evolution of more focused services.
“iTunes dominates this market,” says Karl Joyce, lead author of the Ipsos’ TEMPO Digital Music Brandscape study, “but that by no means suggests that there isn’t room for innovative competitors with differentiated offerings.
The annual summer 2008 survey of 1,148 Internet users showed “58 per cent of people believe iTunes is the top fee-based digital music service or download store."
In terms of brand awareness iTunes reached 39 per cent.
7digital beats iTunes, launches fully DRM-free online music service
Norway consumer body challenges Apple over iTunes
(Reuters)
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