Hey everyone. Just got an e-mail this morning from B&W, goes like this:
We're thrilled to announce that we've formed a partnership with Peter Gabriel and Real World Studios to create Music Club where you can receive a great and exclusive album every month, specially recorded and downloadable in a 'lossless' file format to provide actual CD-quality sound.
Each Music Club album is recorded in Real World's state-of-the-art studios and can be played on an iPod or burnt to CD so you can enjoy the fabulous sound quality on a full hi-fi system.
If it's hard to pigeon-hole the artists you'll hear through our Music Club, that's entirely deliberate. Our albums span many different genres and styles, some well-known, some undiscovered. The only common factor is quality. This is a chance to hear truly brilliant, original music by outstanding musicians working at the peak of their powers.
We are offering a limited free trial to this unique Club which will give you full access to the subscribers area and the opportunity to download an 'EP' version of each album for three months from the date you sign-up. That's three EP's for free in total.
Checking out the website, it says that "all of the albums in the Music Club are presented as Apple Lossless files, which are larger than the compressed mp3 files common to most online music stores. Apple Lossless files are identical to the original file created in the studio, so what you hear is that much closer to what the artist wanted you to hear." And that "Each album comes with a full-colour booklet, which you can download along with the music."
The payment is as follows:
33.95 POUNDS (approx. $67 US) gets you a full album per month for one year,
23.95 POUNDS (approx. $47 US) gets you a full album per month for six months,
and, of course, there's the free trial, where you get an "EP" version of up to 3 albums over three months.
I'm listening right now to the samples of the current album, "Bought for a Dollar, Sold for a Dime", by Little Axe, a blues group. The songs are incredible! Following albums will be Grindhouse (mondo cane)'s "You Think You Have It All", and Gwyneth Herbert's "Ten Lives".
Whether the price is good is up to each person individually; I think $67 for 12 albums is a fantastic price, but then you're locked into whatever bands/albums that they choose to release. I'd guess that if you're not into that artist's/band's music, you can't ask for a refund or anything.
Anyway, I think it's pretty cool, and I'm thinking of upgrading my free trial to a year-long, paid membership. Check it out at:
http://www.bowers-wilkins.com/display.aspx?terid=3558&infid=3550
cheers,
supervij
EDIT: I can confirm, for those interested, that the free trial download for the first album will net you 4 tracks (there are 9 on the album) in m4a format, ranging in size from 27 to 38 MB, one large jpeg of the cover of the album, and one pdf of the front and back cover. The songs sound incredible, in terms of both sound quality and the music itself -- these are some awesome blues songs!
