Universal Music Group (UK and Ireland) and British Sky Broadcasting, the satellite television operator that also offers broadband Internet access, will launch by the end of the year an unnamed venture that will offer music subscriptions to Sky customers. The subscription plans will offer unlimited streaming as well as a fixed number of monthly MP3 downloads (the number of download will vary with different packages). No specifics on pricing, a launch date or other label participants were made available.

Said Jupiter's Mark Mulligan, "Sky is trying to be the first music service targeted at families. They have relationships with households, while offerings such as Apple have been more about young, tech-savvy one-to-one relationships." In his blog he said about subscription levels, "It doesn’t appear (yet) that one of those tiers will be a unlimited or near-unlimited MP3 tier."

Much of the press I've read calls this an iTunes killer, or that Universal and Sky are taking on iTunes. Par for the course. Every new music store or service is tagged as an iTunes challenger. The problem here is that iTunes has too much going for it: selection, familiarity, brand awareness, integration with the iPod. For many people, it is the sole place from which they experience digital music. That may not change. But there is a huge swath of consumers to capture that iTunes will not.

Mulligan and Jupiter's David Card are lumping in this subscription plan with the music subscription services that some at Jupiter have long predicted would be far more popular than they have been. (In 2005 they were predicting $1.2 billion in subscriptions by 2010. It will probably not crack $300 million unless Nokia hits the mobile subscription sweet spot. And much of that revenue is for unlimited streaming, not for "to go" plans.) But there are big differences between the Sky/Universal subscription and the likes of Napster, Rhapsody and Zune -- none of which can get traction outside of a small group of music enthusiasts.

First and most importantly, the subscription plan will offer MP3 files. The idea of renting music has not appealed to consumers. Ownership is more appealing. Rhapsody is not in the same category as eMusic, which sells subscriptions to MP3 download packages of varying sizes. eMusic is not hampered by DRM, its files can be played on any portable device and the files are owned in perpetuity. Again, renting music is not a concept that has not gained widespread acceptance. As Ian Rogers said, "Inconvenient experiences don’t have Web-scale potential."

Second, the service and billing will be bundled with other Sky services. No separate account or credit card expense.

The service will need additional labels -- like all of them -- to reach its potential. And there is potential here, absolutely. Given the degree to which labels and ISPs are working together (and are occasionally nudged toward the negotiating table by the government), the UK strikes me as a good market to launch this sort of product.

[music jobs] Brand and Online Marketing Manager at The Ascot Club/Am Only; Brooklyn, NY.