A new digital music service backed by BT has vowed to "revolutionise" the music industry and give power back to artists, labels and traditional retailers at the expense of new entrants into the market like Apple's iTunes music store.
The new service, which has already tied up a deal with EMI to feature music, videos and exclusive footage from Robbie Williams, aims to provide record labels and bands with a "one stop shop" for all their digital material.
BT has teamed up with Blueprint, formed by a group of technology experts and former record label executives, to launch the new global service.
Its Open Royalty Gateway aims to aggregate all the digital content from record labels and artists around the world, enabling them to set their own rules about how that content is to be consumed.
For example, Williams could record a track and immediately make it available to its email database of fans and online retailers. His label EMI could then set certain parameters, allowing them to listen to the song twice for nothing and then click to buy it.
Songs can also be bundled with other related content, including exclusive videos, ringtones and photos to persuade consumers to buy the track online.
Another feature will allow consumers to email their favourite tracks to friends. If the friend then buy the track, the person who recommended it will receive a commission.
Blueprint will also work with retailers, allowing them to mix and match content stored in the database to create their own offers and marketing campaigns through a service called Song Centre.
It has already signed up Australian high street giant Sanity, which has more than 300 shops across the country. It will launch a download service based on the Open Royalty Gateway early next year.
Richard Bron, a music industry veteran and son of Bronze label founder Gerry, said he had been working on the ambitious scheme for four years and has gathered a team of industry heavyweights including former Sony Music Europe chief Paul Burger to give it added credibility with labels.
He said that the new distribution channel amounted to a legalised version of the file-sharing phenomenon that overwhelmed the music industry three years ago when millions of people began swapping pirated tracks via the internet using software like Kazaa and eDonkey.
"The culture at the moment is that people believe music is free. We had to re-energise the users that peer-to-peer had taken away," said Mr Bron.
"Retailers and rights holders can start talking to each other and doing business again outside the other electronic services in the marketplace," he added in a sideswipe at Apple's iTunes and others such as OD2, the digital distribution business founded by Peter Gabriel and sold earlier this year to US company Loudeye.
"At the moment, we're seeing a retailer setting the wholesale price, which doesn't seem to be quite right," added Mr Bron. Some labels have complained about the power exerted by Apple to set prices in the nascent download market.
The success or failure of the new service, which will make money by taking a small cut of the revenues on all the material stored on vast servers at BT Tower, will depend to a large extent on getting the major labels on board and creating a critical mass of content.
Mr Bron said he was confident that deals would be signed with all the major labels in time for the New Year. Blueprint will also launch a mobile service in the spring, allowing users to download songs and videos to their handsets, buy concert tickets and T-shirts and chat to likeminded fans on the move.
Like the web-based operation, the fate of the mobile service is likely to be determined by the willingness of record labels and existing players, such as Vodafone, to allow a new entrant into the market.
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