Virgin shows passion for online music service
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AS SUSPECTED, VIRGIN DIGITAL is to be launched today and Sir Richard Branson, the overseer of the Virgin group, said it will include over a million tracks and compatibility with 50 plus portable gizmos.
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RICHARD Branson&#39;s Virgin Group said today it was jumping into the market for online music, with a &quot;Digital Megastore&quot; offering US customers song downloads for 99 US cents ($1.
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LONDON - Virgin launches its rival to Apple&#39;s iTunes and Roxio&#39;s Napster in the US today, although consumers will get no break on price because the service charges the same 99 cents a song to download.
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The Easyjet founder teams up with UK download service Wippit to enter the online music market.
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Long before Richard Branson became the latest billionaire with a reality TV show, before he started his cellphone company, his airline and his record label, he sold music from the Virgin Record Shop on Oxford Street in London.
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(InfoWorld) - Virgin Group Ltd. will shut down its online music subscription and download service in the U.S. and U.K. next month, leaving one less competitor for Apple Inc.'s iTunes Music Store. In the U.K., Virgin Digital stopped selling tracks last Friday, and is no longer accepting new customers. As of Friday, only existing customers will be able to access the service, and the site will shut down for good on Oct. 19. The U.K. version of the site said users with more than one month of outstanding subscriptions will get a refund, but unused credits for song downloads should be used and won't be refunded. U.S. users of Virgin Digital will be able to use their credit on Napster LLC's music download service. The pending demise of Virgin Digital marks another casualty among online music stores, which have generally received lukewarm reception from consumers with the exception of Apple's market-leading iTunes service. Since Virgin Digital used digital rights management (DRM) technology from Microsoft Corp. to manage how songs could be played and transferred to portable devices, the service was not compatible with Apple's iPod line, which uses different DRM technology and file format. The Virgin Digital service allows customers to download tracks up to four more times to replace lost or damaged copies. Since that option will no longer be available when the store closes, the company advised customers who purchased tracks to back them up by burning the songs to a CD . Burning the tracks will let those customers re-import the tracks to the computer as MP3 files. Virgin also offered a subscription service that let people access an entire catalog of songs as long as they continued to pay the monthly fees. Those songs, which used Microsoft's DRM, would be unplayable if the person's subscription expired. Once the club closes, subscribers will also lose access to those songs. As part of the terms of subscription service, users were not allowed to burn those songs to CD. Virgin Digital officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the service's closure. The Virgin Digital store is not the only one to fold in the face of competition from Apple's iTunes -- or from illegal downloads. Last month, MTV Networks, which is owned by Viacom Inc., said it would merge its Urge music service with RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody service. Urge, which was a partnership between MTV and Microsoft launched in May 2006 that failed to effectively compete with iTunes. Â
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Richard Branson's Virgin Group said it was jumping into online music, with a &quot;Digital Megastore&quot; for US customers offering song downloads for 99 cents.
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LONDON - Virgin Radio is to broadcast weekly chart rundowns using Napster online sales figures from August 29, beating BBC Radio One to the punch.
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Virgin Group Ltd. on Monday launched its online music store, pitting the retailer best known for its music &quot;megastores&quot; with tech companies such as Apple Computer Inc.
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Sci/Tech News, New York - British tycoon Richard Branson&#39;s Virgin Group said on Monday it was jumping into the market for online music, with a &quot;Digital Megastore&quot; offering US customers song downloads for 99 cents.
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Virgin is calling it quits in the digital music business. The company has stopped selling tracks and accepting new customers as of Friday, and will shut down for good on October 19.
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TESCO, the UKâs biggest supermarket chain, is launching an online music service that it hopes will rival Appleâs market-leading iTunes.
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Virgin Music Download Service Aims to Bite Apple, MSN, Yahoo  On Monday Virgin launched a digital music download service which is expected to challenge Napster, iTunes, MSN Music Store, and Yahoo as the first digital music download service with two big brother backing it up, the Virgin Music Store Chain and ...
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Amazon.com  has signed on  Warner Music Group  to its music download service, which  aims to compete with Apple's  industry-dominating  iTunes online store.
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Virgin has today launched a music download service that will go head to head with established players including iTunes and Napster.
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LOS ANGELES, California, United States of America - Richard Branson&#39;s Virgin Group said Monday it was jumping into online music, with a &quot;Digital Megastore&quot; for US customers offering song downloads for 99 cents.
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The online digital-music business became a little more crowded as Richard Branson&#39;s Virgin Group launched a music Web site in the US The Virgin Digital service sells songs for 99 cents each