Virgin Music Download Service Aims to Bite Apple, MSN, Yahoo
On Monday Virgin launched a digital music download service which is expected to challenge Napster, iTunes, MSN Music Store, and Yahoo as the first digital music download service with two big brother backing it up, the Virgin Music Store Chain and its own radio stations. Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Digital service is available as a free download, lets users download digital music tracks for 99 cents each.
VNUNet.com reports that Virgin is also offering a $7.99 per month subscription service with access to more than 100,000 albums of on-demand music, radio streaming, portable device management tools and searching facilities.
Virgin said the service builds upon the music licences and content distribution platform provided by MusicNet, adding that it is compatible with any portable music device running Microsoft’s ‘Plays for Sure’ software.
“This is the most entertaining, powerful, and intuitive way for dedicated music fans to find, listen to and manage their music collections,” said Zack Zalon, president of Virgin Digital, in a statement.
The company added that it plans to extend the reach of the service beyond the US – but would not provide further details.
