DS Forums

 
 

Legal uk music downloads from today


Reply
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 19-01-2004, 16:17
JonLambert
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Portsmouth
Posts: 589

From today you can apparently download music legally from www.mycokemusic.com

As far as I know, it will cost 99p per song, which I think is a little unfair considering on legal US download sites its 99c (55p), once again the uk getting charged more than everyone else for something.

I have no idea whether you will be able to get a monthly subscription etc, or what artists will actually be available.

In general I'm quite surprised that their hasn't been any promotions for this, I certainly haven't seen anything anywhere, I just stumbled across it when on a totally unrelated website.
JonLambert is offline   Reply With Quote
Please sign in or register to remove this advertisement.
Old 19-01-2004, 17:03
andygrif
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Right Here...or maybe over there
Posts: 815
Except that as of today it's still not live. Odd.

It is encouraging however that this is starting to happen on a wider scale, let's face it the current legal downloads available in the UK are pretty poor offerings. Personally I'm waiting for Apple's iTunes Music Store to hit out shores. I've seen the US version and it is simple, yes sophisticated and offers far fewer drawbacks than the current UK offerings.

I'd be interested to know if anyone is currently using some of the UK ones, and what they make of the sound quality of their downloads, and the features like burning to CD?

Oh and by the way, I have read in Music Week that the cost of a download from Coke will be 80p...not sure yet, as it's not opened it doors on time (good start innit?)
andygrif is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 19-01-2004, 17:42
d'@ve
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Darn Sarf
Posts: 28,743
"Music fans will be able to listen to an album through their computer for 1p a track....

From Ananova

Anyone know more about this 1p a track thing? Other sites are saying the same thing.
d'@ve is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 19-01-2004, 18:03
lee18xx
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: UK
Posts: 2,794
It's live now, looks good
lee18xx is offline Follow this poster on Twitter   Reply With Quote
Old 19-01-2004, 18:13
lee18xx
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: UK
Posts: 2,794
Its 1p to stream play a track through your computer once, it cannot be saved and only played once.

Single tracks cost between 80 and 99p, and can be burned up to three times to a CD or unlimited plays on a computer.
lee18xx is offline Follow this poster on Twitter   Reply With Quote
Old 19-01-2004, 18:14
pxd867
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: UK
Posts: 11,014
Just tried it, looks quite good with a good selection of music to sample from looking at the front page. It's something like 80p a track if you buy lots of credits.
pxd867 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 19-01-2004, 19:02
Pretinama
Guest
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 5,901
I don't seem to be able to get in. But then again I, like some others, am waiting for the iTunes music store to open in Europe. I just *know* that I will spend a fair whack on that store.

Does anyone know what media format the 'mycokemusic' store uses -- AAC; MP3 or (shudder) WMV?

Have a nice day!
Pretinama is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 19-01-2004, 19:15
AcerBen
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 13,155
It's WMA.

Anyway, I shan't be bothering with it - the selection of current hits and albums is pants, there are hardly any pre-releases and everything that's on there you can already download for free. Boring.
AcerBen is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 19-01-2004, 19:51
d'@ve
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Darn Sarf
Posts: 28,743
It's early days, I'm sure they'll get plenty of advance and current stuff up there soon enough.

The download example they give of a 4minute track being 3.5 MBytes in wma format (only!) works out at 117 kbps (OK let's assume its 128kbps) and frankly, at £6.50 UPWARDS for an album, that's truly pathetic and NOWHERE NEAR true CD quality played through a decent sound system.

The search and free sample facility for 30s clips is handy though (although only at 32 kbps and available elsewhere).

I also like the 1p for a full-track to play once, no doubt also at 32kbps. But hey, I can now fully try out any album they do, for less than 15p and that's *brilliant.*

Just now, I wanted to compare Kate Bush's original "Wuthering Heights" with her re-recording of it and the only two other versions ever released. I did it within 5 minutes using the free samples and could have played the full tracks for 4p. Brilliant (I couldn't find samples of Kate's versions anywhere else on the 'Net).

I won't be buying ANY cr*ppy 128kbps wma versions of albums though, not unless they halve the price anyway.
d'@ve is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 19-01-2004, 20:08
DryHumper
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 5,148
Hmmm, well either its been taken down again, or it doesn't like mozilla. I might return when they get round to fixing it
DryHumper is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 19-01-2004, 21:21
lee18xx
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: UK
Posts: 2,794
The 1p a track thing has prooven really useful for me already, its encouraged me into buying an album!
lee18xx is offline Follow this poster on Twitter   Reply With Quote
Old 19-01-2004, 22:12
Snade
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Bradford
Posts: 144
Hmmmm. Just used up three credits and got one track streamed out of it. First time I tried it started pestering me about DRM (for a 32k streamed file...why??) which meant I navigated away from the cokemusic site, when I went back the song had gone (and so had my credit). Second one worked, third one just sat there and didn't play. Maybe this is just first day problems, but for a pay service they really should have the capacity to deal with things like that, so not overly impressed. 99p per track is indeed a complete rip-off, even 80p is about 20p over the odds, so shan't be doing that, but I suppose it will be good to stream albums for 1p a track once it starts working properly.

DRM really annoys me as well. Why are they telling me how many times I can burn a song I have bought onto a CD? If I bought a CD I could burn it as many times as I wanted, same with transferring to an MP3 player (which quite a lot of songs on cokemusic don't seem to allow at all). I can almost see where they're coming from with not being allowed to copy the file itself, but the rest of it is just abuse of power.
Snade is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 20-01-2004, 09:30
JonLambert
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Portsmouth
Posts: 589
To see what the service was like I thought I would download a track last night, and I have to say that my first impressions of the site are disappointing.

I had no problem registering on the site, or buying credits (not a big surprise that the part where they take your money works fine, no problems )

I like dance music a fair amount and I was dissappointed at the selection available, I could hardly find any dance tracks that I typed into the search engine, including ones that have been extremely popular in recent times.

So, once I picked my track, I clicked on the download button, and the download manager program opened, this is when all the problems began. 1 song, at a size of 3.3Mb, took an incredible 1 hour 7 mins to download on my 56k modem!!!!! This is incredibly slow. The maximum transfer rate I achieved at any one time was only 1.3Kb/s. To make matters worse, the download timed out on no less than 9 occassions, requiring me to press a button each time to get the download to resume. In other words I couldnt have just left the pc safe in the knowledge that it would download the song completely when i was not there.

The track was encoded at 128kbps, which in my opinion is too low, and is certainly not "cd quality" as is claimed. I would be perfectly happy to stake a weeks wages on me being able to tell the difference between this downloaded version, and a version played from a cd. At times, you can definately hear the tell tell signs that the music is compressed, but only when using headphones though. I just feel that as we have paid for the track, we should get something of a little better quality.

The track is a wma file which is copy protected, meaning that you are pratically forced into playing it in Windows Media Player, it just wont work in anything else. It will also prevent you from copying your new song directly to a lot of mp3 players or MD players too. In my opinion, too much restriction on something you have paid for.

I did however find that whole licensing issue rather pointless. You are able to burn most of these tracks onto a cd (up to 3 times in most cases). In doing so, I found that the copy protection seems to just go. Basically, you can take the cd with the burnt track on it, and rip it back onto your hard drive, with no problems, and then you can do as you wish with it. In fact, if you have a little pc knowledge you can quite easily make an mp3 file of your downloaded track without the need to burn it to a cd first, or use any illegal software. So in conclusion, why bother copy protecting it.

So, all in all, I was quite dissappointed by my initial use of this site. I know that they did have technical difficulties yesterday, but first impressions count. I may well give it another go at some point in the future, but not for now. I think that their will have to be an improvement if they want to get people to use a service like this, instead of illegal download places.
However, every cloud has a silver lining:-

There is a feature of this website that is very good indeed, and thats the ability to stream a track to your computer for 1p. This means, that you can effectively listen to an entire album for under 20p, and decide whether you would like to buy it after that. Brilliant!!!!! Brilliant for you at least, but not necessarily for them. I think I may well take use this of this feature, but if I do decide that I've listened to an album I want to buy, I won't be buying it from them.
The reason: The album on that site could cost me £8, and for my £8 I will probably spend an eternity downloading it, and then at the end be a little restricted in what I can do with my downloaded music. The alternative, is to go to a different internet site, and buy the cd, which on a lot of occasions will be around the same price or a little more, but this time, I am actually getting cd quality sound, with the cd covers and booklet etc. I am also less restricted on what I can do with the music, in most cases, being able to quite easily copy to my hard drive and/or md player etc. So, in the end this great feature, could well end up benefiting other internet sites.

I would love to hear other peoples experience of this site.
JonLambert is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 20-01-2004, 09:54
andygrif
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Right Here...or maybe over there
Posts: 815
As of this morning, the site is off-line AGAIN! So I still haven't seen what it is like. Plus, somewhat dissapointingly, I registered my email address about two weeks ago which promised to inform me as the system went live. No email.

Today's message reads that the site is 'currently being uploaded with the latest music' and promises to be back by 11am. How thick do they think I am?

Not a good start in my opinion - launches late, offline, and according to the report from above very slow downloads.

Also, if the site solely uses 128k WMA files, that's not much use to the 125,000 people who got an iPod around Christmastime.

Nice idea Coke...badly executed so far.
andygrif is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 20-01-2004, 10:05
Peej Kerton
Banned User
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Near Birmingham
Posts: 3,470

Originally posted by JonLambert
As far as I know, it will cost 99p per song, which I think is a little unfair considering on legal US download sites its 99c (55p), once again the uk getting charged more than everyone else for something
You wonder why we haven't joined the Euro?!?!
Peej Kerton is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 20-01-2004, 10:33
chriseip
Forum Member
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: UK, Hertfordshire
Posts: 236
Further back now! The message just changed to 'back by 12 midday'.
chriseip is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 20-01-2004, 11:12
andygrif
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Right Here...or maybe over there
Posts: 815
Originally posted by chriseip
Further back now! The message just changed to 'back by 12 midday'.
So it has!! Interesting article here....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/3412379.stm
andygrif is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 20-01-2004, 13:26
JonLambert
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Portsmouth
Posts: 589
A similar story here:

http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia...126978,00.html

It doesn't look as though you will be able to get back into the site until much later today. What quality!!! I shall be waiting for iTunes I think
JonLambert is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 20-01-2004, 13:50
likescats
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 904
Now it says it will be back by 4pm anyone want to bet it won't be
likescats is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 20-01-2004, 14:28
Geeg
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Scotland
Posts: 19,974
It seems a good cash in idea - I would gladly pay 1p to listen to a song to see if I liked it knowing the quality I was going to get would be good.

I shall try back again at 4pm for a nosey. Poor things, I bet some people are stressed to high heaven with it going a bit pear shaped for them LOL.
Geeg is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 20-01-2004, 16:23
ogryn
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Woking
Posts: 3,600
I used the Virgin Megastore one last night. Review on my homepage.
ogryn is offline Follow this poster on Twitter   Reply With Quote
Old 20-01-2004, 16:31
Geeg
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Scotland
Posts: 19,974
Originally posted by ogryn
I used the Virgin Megastore one last night. Review on my homepage.
I'll have a look cos the Coke one is still not open.
Geeg is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 20-01-2004, 16:42
JonLambert
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Portsmouth
Posts: 589
Originally posted by ogryn
I used the Virgin Megastore one last night. Review on my homepage.
An interesting review there. its particularly interesting to see that virgin are using 192kbps whereas the coke one only seemed to use 128kbps. I may have a little look at this one, especially as the prices seem the same.
JonLambert is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 20-01-2004, 17:41
ogryn
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Woking
Posts: 3,600
ah, sorry my mistake. They are 128Kbsp as well. Sod my memory.

I can give you details of the licence. It says:
Protected Content
s copy(s) to CD remaining
s copy(s) to portable player remaining
Copy to an SDMI-compliant portable player not allowed
Licence back up not allowed

I thought the copy to CD would display 9 now I had burnt it once, but no change. I wonder if they forgot to put the limiter on?

I would recommend doing what I did though... buy a £5 pass, to try it out. I'm sure you could find 5 songs that you want.
ogryn is offline Follow this poster on Twitter   Reply With Quote
Old 20-01-2004, 17:44
ogryn
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Woking
Posts: 3,600
The Coke shop seems to be the same as all the other ones. They all redirect to the od2 domain.
ogryn is offline Follow this poster on Twitter   Reply With Quote
 
Reply




 
Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 15:31.