Over the last year, the total number of songs officially downloaded from the Internet has increased from a total of 500,000 tunes per year to a spectacular 500,000 per week!
Therefor, Britain's two biggest specialist music sellers are heading into the ultimate battle for supremacy of this new territory.
HMV, the chain which dominates the specialist music market, doesn't want to waste any time and launches its download service on Monday.
But Virgin Megastores, the second-biggest dedicated music chain in Britain, will introduce its own version on Friday, in what is said to be a "sophisticated ambush" of its rival.
As you can see for yourself, they are pretty serious about it!
Both music chains are to offer
single tracks for permanent sale and a monthly subscription service giving access to an online "jukebox", and also they both target Windows Media-based portable music players, as their systems are not compatible with Apple's iPod.
Virgin Digital's basic 9.99 monthly subscription gives access to the 1.2 million tracks in the Virgin Digital music library from up to three different computers, while a monthly subscription of 14.99 allows users to transfer an unlimited number of tracks to compatible MP3 players.
Buying downloaded songs costs 79 pence each, with offers available on certain albums at variable prices.
Virgin claimed that its subscription rate would be cheaper than the one of HMV, but HMV still has the advantage of numbers on a catalog of 1.5 million songs, 300,000 more than Virgin's declared stock.
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