Peter Griffin: Sweet music to our ears

When I caught up with Sony BMG head honcho Thomas Hesse last month, I assumed he was sniffing around these parts because a major music download deal was ready to be signed off. Hesse promised that the comprehensive music download service New Zealand has been lacking for far too long would be running by the end of the year.

The launch last week of Coke Tunes proved Hesse right, although he had nothing to do with bringing it to us. Coke's amazing online music play is backed by Universal Music. But who cares about the businesses behind it, finally we have a download service that boasts a decent selection - 570,000 songs and 10,000 artists.

Coke has very little to do with the service, except slap its name all over it. The site is run by LoudEye, which has set up download sites under the Coke banner. Fine, I thought. At least Coke might start to give away free song download credits with under-the-cap promotions. But then I read this on the Cokefridge.co.nz website: "Coke is continuing to support the development of New Zealand musicians by donating their profits from all sales made via the CokeTunes download store to the newly created CokeTunes Music Fund."

This fund will apparently dish out all the profits from the sale of music online as grants to emerging musicians. That's quite impressive. The more songs we download the more cash available to pump into fostering new talent.

So is the service any good? A first look would suggest it is. Tracks cost $1.75 each to download and whole albums cost $18. Audio streams cost 5c a track. A free 30-second clip of each song can also be played.

Sweetening the deal is a discount available this month that gives you $60 credit for $30.

The music selection is reasonable. This site doesn't cover all the big labels, so there are big gaps in the back catalogue. There's only one U2 album, How to Dismantle an Atom Bomb, but all the Coldplay albums are there. The selection is heavily driven by the top 40, which will make it popular with youth.

You'll need Windows Media Player to play the songs, which arrive in wma format, and are playable on most MP3 players. If you're listening to the free clips or streaming the songs, the player will appear unobtrusively at the bottom of the site. Audio quality is good. Digital rights management built into the songs means you can make three copies - one on your computer, one burned to CD and another on a portable music player, for instance. That's fairly reasonable. No longer does the music industry have to beat the anti-piracy drum without offering a legitimate alternative to illegal downloads.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY