Five songs a day for Dh1 with du music downloads

Du has launched a music downloading service to boost its entertainment offerings amid tough competition on traditional services offered by telecommunications companies.

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Subscribers to du's music store will pay Dh1 per day for the right to download and keep five songs. Users will be able to select from a library of 10,000 songs, said du. The service will be integrated with social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Farid Faraidooni, the chief commercial officer of du, said the service would offer music "that caters to every taste".

Globally, telecoms companies are turning to alternative revenue streams to boost profits as new online services eat away at their traditional revenues.

Du has already launched a service called Anayou, which offers entertainment content and social networking. The site would be funded partly by advertising revenues, du said previously. Du is not the first regional telecoms operator to venture into the music-download business. UrFilez, a fledgling online music service, said in 2010 it had partnered the Bahraini telecoms company Batelco to offer music via mobile applications.

UrFilez is one of just a handful of music-download services to be launched in the Middle East.

Last year, the Saudi company Music Master began offering online music downloads.

The Music Master site had more than 3 million songs available at launch, priced at Dh3 per track or Dh30 (US$8) per album. Virgin Megastore is also planning to launch a digital download platform on its website, the company said in September.

Singles on Virgin's platform are expected to be priced at Dh3 to Dh5, while albums will be about Dh30, a discount on the combined value of all the songs on the track list.

The website, which will be in English, will include music from Arabic, Indian and Farsi acts, as well as global mainstream artists.

As with other music platforms in the Middle East, customers will be able to go to Virgin's website and download tracks straight to a digital device.

bflanagan@thenational.ae

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