Downloading bandits

This week sees the launch of two new music downloading sites that are both Australia-designed. The first, Guvera.com, officially launched today with big-brand sponsorship and 30 million dollars worth of advertising and the second, Bandit.fm, is a division of Sony Music Australia which officially launches its pricing plans and memberships tomorrow.

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The article New day dawns for digital music and it's Australian led discusses the interest surrounding Bandit, as it consolidates different music labels and plans to make the change to streaming rather than downloading content. Despite streaming music not being as popular in Australia as it is in Europe and other parts of the world, individual labels are in the midst of creating their own channels through Bandit and larger labels have already signed up. Sony is currently promising that the site won’t be all about their artists but rather a 'marketplace of music'.

The future for both of these sites is hard to gauge as advertising-funded sites like Guvera usually struggle, however they are both new alternatives to online music in Australia and will be interesting to follow.