Sky Songs will close in February
Sky Songs will close in February as the service failed to attract enough customers with many people still favouring to purchase their music from iTunes or to listen for free through Spotify or last.fm. With less than 10,000 members to its name since launching in October 2009, the company has decided to close Sky Songs.
"We've taken the difficult decision to close Sky Songs. Although we are extremely proud of the service we built and the experience it offers, we just didn't see the consumer demand we'd hoped for. As Sky Songs demonstrates, we're a business that takes risks and innovates, but at the same time, we're pragmatic and act decisively when a new venture isn't working out."
BSkyB spokesman
When it launched, Sky Songs had over 4 million new releases and songs from back catalogues of every major music label and a large number of independents. For £4.99 a month, customers were able to listen to advertising-free music streamed direct to their computer or download five mp3 tracks a month. Unfortunately for Sky, the service was uneconomical to run without a larger customer base.
The shutting down of a legal music source for this reason is a blow for the music industry as it's a sign that some consumers aren't willing to give up their ways of downloading music illegally. The industry would seemingly have an ever-harder battle on its hands to try and encourage users toward legal practices.
Comments
I would agree with the last comment. I would have gladly paid 4.99 to have advert free music. My kids are always using the "free" services and the adverts drive me mad! How come I am bombarded with TV stuff that I have no use for and no one thought to mention something I could have used!
Yeah i've never heard of it either until today..
It vaguely rings a bell with me but I'd forgotten about it. Unfortunately in my case I can stream from my own collection so it probably just didn't appeal.
wow talk about short termism, they basically gave it a year.
A case of believe in better!
I echo the previous people in that I had not even heard of the service until this article but what I find amazing is the immediate jump to the conclusion that illegal downloads is the reason why this failed. It wasn't poor marketing. It wasn't due to other competition. No, it was due to piracy? Huh...
Completely agree minglong. I'd never heard of the service until now and the huge and unfounded leap in the article to illegal dowloading is bizarre. Seems to me it was just very poorly marketed.
One would have expected some advertising in the Sky magazine etc but there was none.
I never subscribed as the five MP3's worked out more expensive than using Amazon.
- andrew
- over 10 years ago
I stopped reading the magazine a long time ago, but to echo the others, given the amount of time sky dedicate to trailing stuff in advert breaks, I am surprised I have been unaware of this service until publication of this news item.
Sky what ?
Never heard of it before.
I can remember seeing a lot of ads for it at launch. Can't remember where though. It was either on Sky TV channels or on banners on Webpages. Either way it was a pretty crappy offering.
"The shutting down of a legal music source for this reason is a blow for the music industry as it's a sign that some consumers aren't willing to give up their ways of downloading music illegally."
You are all aware that this isn't a Sky statement? I suggest you keep to the facts, TB.
@andrew
It's not illegal.
How many times do you need to be told.
It could also mean that Sky did not push it very well. I'm a Sky subscriber of many years, and until this article, I did not know about it. Sky are constantly pushing their various movie and sports channels, and sky box office, but not one single mention of Sky Songs on any of their various channels. Maybe if they had tried a bit harder to attract people it might have worked.