BTopenworld rocked by dotmusic buy

Pop goes the weasel

By Tim Richardson • Get more from this author

Posted in Telecoms, 7th March 2002 15:31 GMT

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Btopenworld is coughing up "less than £1 million" to buy dotmusic.com from United Business Media (UBM).

BT's mass-market broadband ISP claims dotmusic will become a "launch pad" for its music services as it builds on its commitment to create focused destination sites for users.

While dotmusic has plenty of content including news, charts, Webcasts and a shop, BTopenworld will be looking to provide a subscription-based music download service similar to the classical service it launched in January.

Indeed, it's already conducting a trial of a mass-market music subscription service with Peter Gabriel's OD2 outfit.

Today's content announcement comes hard on the heels of news that BTopenworld is to cut the cost of its broadband service to less than £30 a month following a shake-up (or should that be shake-down) of wholesale DSL pricing.

Not only is it making it cheaper to gain high-speed Internet access, it’s also providing punters somewhere to go and spend their disposable income.

Dotmusic was founded in 1995 and claims to be the UK's and Europe's most popular music web site with 1.7 million users and 165 million page impressions a month.

Last year Tiscali announced it had teamed up with OD2 to flog music online. ®

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