The Coca-Cola Company has managed to launch their website after two days of technical problems from its original planned launch. These were reported to have been caused by the lack of staff as a result of their national holiday. Coke is using technology from OD2 which is Microsoft's European DRM supplier and tracks are supplied in WMA format. Coke music's main plan is to compete with the
other music online services such as iTunes and aims to make it the best place on
the net to download music with further website development and consumer
experience.
They offer a collection of around 250,000 songs from about 8,500 artists and promise to offer music by several popular artists up to six weeks before reaching the shops. Tracks are priced
at
As Coco-cola only provide music in Microsoft's WMA format, they are not compatible with Apple's iPod and it is not clear if consumers can also record purchased tracks to CD. Music must be purchased by either a credit or debit card. Quakester2000 submitted the following news from the BBC via our news submit :
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My Coke Music, which offers more than 250,000 songs from 80p per track, was offline for most of Monday and Tuesday. Coke is hoping to cash in on the recent growth in online music services, which have been spearheaded by iTunes. The website is powered by Peter Gabriel's company OD2, which is also behind services from Virgin and HMV. Speaking about the problems, a Coca-Cola spokesman said: "As you can appreciate, being the first to do this and working with new technology there are often teething problems. "Our primary aim is to get the technology right, the consumer experience right and to develop the site further to make it the best place to download music on the net." 250,000 songs It is reported that the technical problems were compounded by the fact that support staff in the US were not in their offices because it was a national holiday there. The site has promised to have song by artists such as Stereophonics, Sugababes and Kings of Leon on the site up to six weeks before they are made available in the shops. And instead of downloading tracks, people will also be able to listen to songs through their computer for as little as 1p a track. However, music downloaded from the website is not available in a form which can be played on Apple's iPod, the most popular portable media player in the world. OD2 uses Microsoft's WMA format, which is a rival to Apple's preferred AAC format, which the iPod uses. The two formats are vying to become the preferred system for consumers but many people remain confused about the differences and incompatibility issues. The Coca-Cola site is only available to people who have credit cards. |
With Coca-cola being such as popular soft-drink and being sold in nearly every burger takeaway, grocery store and drive-thru, they should have no problem promoting their music store on their drinks. Tracks work out more expensive than iTunes pricing, but then again iTunes is not available in the
Coke's music store is the only one I know of to charge per track playback. Then again, one does not need to take up a monthly subscription and thus only pays for what they listen to. With the average song length, it works out at about 6 hours playback per UK£1 which is a good price for a virtual radio station which one has total control over which songs are played.
Feel free to discuss and read about legal music download services on our Music Downloads, P2P & Legal Issues Forum.
Source: BBC News Entertainment
...No thanks! Anyway, there's no current music out there I want. The last good year of music is 1994. Only seems like yesterday!...
well tranceaddict, meet me 
I've turned all my mp3 files into wma, why??? because of quality, and space-saving, and it's free. also it's the only format apart from mp3 i've seen a hi-fi minicomponent plays back. 270 wma songs in a cd sound great in my panasonic nitrix system 
where could i play aac or ogg vorbis?? apart from the pc or ipod, nowhere.
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