DOWNLOADING IS SLOW GOING FOR BOWIE CD
nypostonline.com
By ALLYSON LIEBERMAN
David Bowie's new album, "Hours," is living up to
its name, taking diehard fans plenty of hours to
download.
The British rock legend, with his label Virgin
Records, a division of EMI Music, took the future
into his own hands Tuesday, becoming the first
major recording artist to launch an entire album
for downloading from the web.
But the release didn't exactly rock everyone's
world.
"There were glitches. This was the first time this
was done with such a high-profile artist. But
glitches are to be expected," said Meghan Cast,
Manager of Retail Markets at Liquid Audio, the
site that enables the digital delivery of music over
the Internet.
"But it also depends on who you talk to," Cast
warned, saying there is a time difference between
downloading the album with the help of a cable
modem or T1 line and the slower 56k home
modems.
Cast said the Liquid Audio technical support line
did receive a lot of calls over the past several days
and were forced to increase capacity to meet the
heavy demand.
"Sixteen percent of people required tech support,"
said Jay Samit, EMI's senior VP of new media. "I
consider that a low number."
Still, Bowie fans chiming in on Deja.com's "David
Bowie" fan club site, did not find "Modern Love"
with the new digital medium.
"I submit my credit details ... get the pass key,
etc.... start the download - get three songs ... then
get closed off from the end of the 4th track. Is this
a RIP OFF or what???" asked one disgruntled
fan.
"It took me 8 hours," wrote another Bowie lover.
"I'm still trying, for the second day in a row,"
complained another fan.
Bowie's "Hours" launched on over 50 major
online music retailers on Tuesday, including
TowerRecords.com, Musicland.com,
CDNow.com, and Musicmaker.com. The album
will be available for download for two weeks
before the album's U.S. in-store release Oct. 5.
The cost of the download is $17.98.
The problems do not surprise some Internet
analysts."We saw the same problem with the
Super Bowl and Victoria's Secret - too much
volume for an infrastructure that was never built
for high-volume," said Mark Hardie, a senior
analyst at Forrester Research.
"But when it doesn't go well, they'll say, 'We
planned it,'" he continued.
And that's exactly what EMI claimed. "Of course
there were some minor glitches," said Samit.
"This thing was an experiment and an experiment
is supposed to have problems. So we consider
this a phenomenal success." |
