Virgin Puts Out Cheap Music Downloads
Virgin Digital's music download service this week quietly left beta and launched a new subscription offering known as "Red Pass." For just $7.99 per month, users can download and stream as much music from Virgin's library as they want, with the option to permanently buy and burn tracks for 99 cents.
The $7.99 USD monthly fee makes Virgin's Red Pass the least expensive subscription music offering currently available, following Yahoo Music Unlimited's price increase from $4.99 to $9.99 USD. Red Pass is only offered in the United States at the present time.
Like similar offerings from Napster, RealNetworks and Yahoo, Virgin has employed Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format and Janus digital rights management to enable playback of songs on supported portable devices. But to differentiate itself from competitors, Virgin is taking ideas from its retail experience.
In an April interview, Virgin Digital President Zack Zalon told BetaNews that, "The secret sauce to this is to take the actual experience of being in a great retail store, or Virgin Megastore for that matter, and bring it into the digital space. One of the things that establishes a Virgin presence in any market...is that the customer experience has to be second to none."
To that end, Virgin Digital offers a direct link to customer support through a feature on its software called "Ask the Expert." All inquiries are usually handled within 24 to 48 hours. "Not only can people ask questions about technical support, but they can ask questions about music support as well," Zalon explained.
** Read the full BetaNews interview with Virgin Digital President Zack Zalon **
Music downloaded from Virgin Digital can be played back on up to three computers much like iTunes, but unlike Apple's offering, Virgin offers users the ability to easily re-download their music up to 4 times for free in the event of a system upgrade or hard drive crash.
In addition, if a user lets the Red Pass subscription lapse, they can have their entire music library restored upon re-activating their account.
Synchronization also plays a major role in Virgin's offering, Zalon told BetaNews. "Part of the problem with digital rights management right now is that people are not spending enough time focusing on seamless synchronization, and so what that does is exposes the issues around digital rights instead of hiding them in the background where they belong."
"We've spent a considerable amount of time on a suite of synchronization support technologies and device support technologies that we call Device IQ," Zalon said.
Virgin Digital currently boasts a library of about 2 million tracks from 15,000 different record labels. Like Yahoo, Virgin utilizes MusicNet to handle the song licenses, while the software and other features were home grown.
"We are banking on subscription services as the foundation of the future as the way people are going to interact with their music," Zalon added. "It's more exciting, it's a great way to explore new music, and it's a great way to listen to a variety of new musical formats without having to go out and spend thousands of dollars on a CD collection."
The Virgin Digital software client is available for download from FileForum.