October 2, 2002

5:40 AM

Music fans are being offered "the biggest ever official give-away of digital music" in a campaign to tempt them away from unofficial download sites. Visitors will be given £5 worth of free tracks, which will buy 500 streamed songs, 50 downloads or five tunes to copy, or "burn", onto a CD. (Via BBC)
posted by MintSauce (21 comments total)

"Digital Download Day gives EVERYBODY in the UK £5 worth of credits"

Perhaps you should qualify your post: "UK [m]usic fans are being offered..."
posted by majick at 6:03 AM on October 2, 2002

The site you have tried to enter requires Internet Explorer 5 (or better) with Windows Media Player 7 (or better) on Windows XP, 2000, Me or 98. Click Here to use our Doctor Download application to help you check your configuration alternatively Email Dr Download.

This site doesn't even work for Opera browsers. Anyone tried with anything else other than IE5+?
posted by SpaceCadet at 6:12 AM on October 2, 2002

Perhaps you should qualify your post

I think it's usually the other way around here. I know I tend to forget to qualify when I post something that applies specifically to the States...
posted by Shane at 6:13 AM on October 2, 2002

Perhaps you should qualify your post: "UK [m]usic fans are being offered..."

No, it should be qualified as:-

"Users with Internet Explorer 5 (or better) with Windows Media Player 7 (or better) on Windows XP, 2000, Me or 98 are being offered..."
posted by SpaceCadet at 6:17 AM on October 2, 2002

......which will buy 500 streamed songs, 50 downloads or five tunes to copy

500 Streamed songs? Surely they mean, 500 songs you can easily copy onto CD? How easy is it to digitally record streamed media?
posted by SpaceCadet at 6:26 AM on October 2, 2002

And, after Digital Download Day, they'll have a huge database of IP addresses (undoubtedly tied to registration data) of people who are quite likely to have downloaded music illegally...
posted by Danelope at 6:39 AM on October 2, 2002

just like a honeynet.
posted by trioperative at 6:43 AM on October 2, 2002

Requires Windows Media Player 7 (or better). Now if it was MP3 (so I could play it on Windows, Linux or my MP3 player) then I might have been interested. Nice try, but it's not going to work.
posted by ralawrence at 6:46 AM on October 2, 2002

Fantastic. I came here to bitch about the little problem I just had accessing the site with Mozilla 1.0 on Linux, and my plans to listen to the tracks in XMMS here in Australia, but it seems I'm too late to add anything new to the discussion. 'nuff said.
posted by Jimbob at 6:49 AM on October 2, 2002

yeah - this has got to be a honeytrap... tho' in my IMO not a very tempting one.
posted by jiroczech at 8:16 AM on October 2, 2002

It's NOT a honeytrap you silly, silly people.

OD2 are, in the UK, a reasonably well known and fairly small independent digital music company. Their business is to licence tracks from record labels and sell them through websites. They are not directly connected to major labels and thus have no interest in anything other than trying to sell digital music legitimately. No tricks.

Now as for the rest of you whingers... there is a link to mail 'Dr. Download' (customer support) on the site. If, like me, you cannot use the files because they don't support your browser or media player, I suggest you E-MAIL the company and tell them/ complain, as I have done. It's 20 seconds out of your time but it lets them know that the demand is there for formats other than Windows Media and platforms other than Windows.
posted by skylar at 8:56 AM on October 2, 2002

I'd like to see the biggest UNofficial music giveaway ever... I bet it kicks the crap out of this one ;P
posted by zekinskia at 9:11 AM on October 2, 2002

I'd like to see the biggest UNofficial music giveaway ever

It was known as Audiogalaxy ...
posted by walrus at 9:15 AM on October 2, 2002

SpaceCadet: With an Audigy soundcard, it's as simple as pressing 'record' on your sound software of choice, and then pressing 'play' on the stream.
posted by tpoh.org at 9:25 AM on October 2, 2002

Duh does pay - I accidentally joined the MSN club thing (free, quick, no credit card details to be given) and it's full of great, difficult-to-find stuff. I got 500 credits - each download is 10 credits; a stream is 1. Excellent! Many thanks, Mint Sauce!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:28 AM on October 2, 2002

Record Anything eg: streaming video, audio, whatever.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:56 AM on October 2, 2002

Pssst...Duh pays, part II: if you try to subscribe to both, you get another 500 credits. Doesn't work a third time, though...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:19 AM on October 2, 2002

emusic has been allowing trial members to download 50 free mp3s for a long time now. what makes this the biggest?
posted by dobbs at 11:52 AM on October 2, 2002

With an Audigy soundcard, it's as simple as pressing 'record' on your sound software of choice, and then pressing 'play' on the stream.

...or not.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 12:30 PM on October 2, 2002

With an Audigy soundcard, it's as simple as pressing 'record' on your sound software of choice, and then pressing 'play' on the stream.

Well, all I know is, I can COPY streams to my hard-disk with Mp3 Stream Recorder 2.2. Not sure about other formats though.
posted by SpaceCadet at 10:49 PM on October 2, 2002

When will the media be allowed to stop "quoting" the word "burn" when they use it in reference to CDs?

It's irritating.
posted by El_Gray at 10:47 AM on October 3, 2002