BSkyB is closing down its Sky Songs subscription music service, blaming poor take-up. The fiver-a-month offer bundled unlimited ad-free listening to a catalog of 5 million songs, and five MP3s to keep a month.

Sky has told subscribers by email that the service will shut up shop on 7 February, but there's no indication on its signup page that the service is doomed. Not yet, anyway.

The service launched, after much rumour and delay, in October 2009. Music streaming rivals such as Rhapsody, Spotify and We7 all offer an offline, mobile part to their service, something Sky was never able to offer.

Virgin has yet to launch its second crack at the music market, to fulfill the announcement made way back in the days of the wax cylinder - or June 2009, to be exact. Sony put up resistance to the original concept of an all-you-can-eat MP3 downloads. ®

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