Details on our new MusicHub service, launching today

eircom: Tony

Hey again

We're launching a new service called MusicHub today - here's the press release about it:

eircom Launches MusicHub

• More than 4m Tracks to be Available Online
• First Irish ISP to offer FREE Music Streaming
• Up to 75% Cheaper than iTunes for Music Downloads

(Wednesday, 8th December 2010) eircom today announced the launch of its new online music service – eircom MusicHub, making eircom the first Internet service provider in Ireland to offer FREE music streaming for its customers. With a catalogue of millions of tracks from thousands of artists, the service offers an unrivalled selection of music across almost every genre from rock to pop; dance to disco; and jazz to blues.

FREE Streaming

eircom MusicHub offers FREE and unlimited streaming to all existing eircom broadband customers. In addition, customers can listen to every track in the catalogue without restriction or advertising. It has a rich ‘My Music’ feature that allows users to build up a library of favourite artists, music and custom playlists to be shared with friends. The service offers great quality streaming at 128kbps AAC+, far superior to the stream rate of other services.

Cheaper Downloads

The price of downloading music has never been cheaper with bundled prices up to 75% cheaper than iTunes, at 32c per download. In addition, the service lets you download DRM free music to PCs, laptops and copy to portable devices.

Customers can keep all downloaded music even if you leave the service. For as little as €5.99 a month, customers can download 15 tracks per month. Alternatively, users can download 40 tracks per month for €12.99, which is 32c per download. Non eircom customers can also access the service. All you need is a fixed line broadband connection.

Commenting on the launch, Stephen Beynon, Group Managing Director of Consumer and Small Business, said “eircom MusicHub is a major development for eircom in the online content space. We are the first and only Internet provider in Ireland to offer online streaming as part of a music service. Customers will not find a greater selection of music across all genres anywhere else in Ireland from their broadband provider. It is the third significant market development this year from eircom, following the introduction of Next Generation Broadband and the launch of eMobile, and underlines how eircom offers unrivalled value to our customers.”

Personalised Music

Searching and discovering music has never been easier. Combined with social networking features such as tagging, eircom MusicHub encourages users to share playlists and recommend songs, building an online community that helps users tailor music to your own personal tastes.

Extensive Catalogue

There are millions of tracks available already which will grow to more than four million in the coming weeks. The service follows individual contractual deals with each of the major record labels including Universal Music UK, Sony, EMI, Warner Music as well as Merlin, the global rights body representing thousands of independent labels.

Collectively, they represent all the major international and Irish artists. eircom MusicHub is powered by Media Service Provider (MSP) a specialist media technology company who provides the service platform.

Check out www.eircommusichub.ie today. Existing eircom broadband customers only need their account number and telephone number to register for the free streaming service. Debit and credit cards can be used to purchase monthly download bundles.

Interesting Facts

• The 4 million tracks available for stream or download would consume approximately 25 TB of hard disk space
• At an average of 3 ½ minutes per track, it would take just under 10,000 days to listen to the entire MusicHub catalogue.

Other features:

• Ability to test out new music for free and manage your favourites through ‘My Music’ feature.
• ‘Radio’ feature that can generate random play-lists based on genre, favourite tracks or favourite artists
• Social networking functionality and commenting/tagging features.
• Streaming bit rate is 128kbps AAC+, streams are served to a flash player over HTTP. MP3 download bit rate is 320kbps.
• Wide range of internet browsers supported - IE7/8, Firefox and the latest versions of Chrome and Safari.
• Secure online payment by credit card if you choose to purchase downloads.
• Powered by Media Services Provider (MSP)

Pricing structure for eircom and non-eircom customers

If you have any question about this service (or pretty much anything to do with eircom), please do let us know and we'll do our best to help.

Cheers

Tony



Dingatron

Disappointing that it's solely flash based. No support for Apple devices. Will there be support in the future for non flash devices?

eircom: Ant

Dingatron wrote: »

Disappointing that it's solely flash based. No support for Apple devices. Will there be support in the future for non flash devices?

Hi Dingatron,

I appreciate what you say as I have only an itouch at home myself. I believe that the designers are moving towards making musichub available on smaller devices, iphones etc. This could possibly be in the form of an app.

I will try and find out and post it on here or the eircom forum - eircomconnect.eircom.net/forum

Thanks again for the query - and bring this to my attention..
I will try and get you an answer soon,

All the best
Ant

tracert

Hi,

I'm in a rented house w/ Eircom BB but no phone. I don't know the account number but I could get it from the landlord. The thing is that the form for signing up requires your eircom phone number, which we don't have.

Is there a way around this or is musichub only available with a phone/bband bundle?

Thanks,
Dan

eircom: Mark

tracert wrote: »

Hi,

I'm in a rented house w/ Eircom BB but no phone. I don't know the account number but I could get it from the landlord. The thing is that the form for signing up requires your eircom phone number, which we don't have.

Is there a way around this or is musichub only available with a phone/bband bundle?

Thanks,
Dan

Hi tracert,

You need to be an eircom customer with the broadband service to avail of the free unlimited streaming. However if you have broadband with another provider there are packages starting at €6.99 per month for unlimited streaming.

Thanks, Mark

TBi

Looks interesting although grooveshark already provides the streaming part of this...

Is there a way to purchase individual tracks? I don't want to pay a 'bundle' when i only buy about 1 or 2 songs from iTunes monthly.

eircom: Mark

TBi wrote: »

Looks interesting although grooveshark already provides the streaming part of this...

Is there a way to purchase individual tracks? I don't want to pay a 'bundle' when i only buy about 1 or 2 songs from iTunes monthly.

HI TBi,

I am afraid that to avail of downloads on eircom musichub customers need to sign up for a set package. So the 3 month subscription for €5.99 per month allows for 15 downloads and free steaming is our most basic package for eircom broadband customers.

Thanks, Mark

tracert

eircom: Mark wrote: »

Hi tracert,

You need to be an eircom customer with the broadband service to avail of the free unlimited streaming. However if you have broadband with another provider there are packages starting at €6.99 per month for unlimited streaming.

Thanks, Mark

I am an eircom broadband customer?

eircom: Tony

tracert wrote: »

I am an eircom broadband customer?

Hi tracert

once you are an eircom customer you can avail of the free streaming and eircom bundles. If you PM me your a/c no I can confirm that you are an eircom customer and advise you how to avail of MusicHub.
Tony

Parawind

So you can download mp3 files but is there any intention to provide FLAC downloads of the tracks? If so will you be charging more for FLAC downloads or when you download a track would you be entitled to both versions?

eircom: Tony

Parawind wrote: »

So you can download mp3 files but is there any intention to provide FLAC downloads of the tracks? If so will you be charging more for FLAC downloads or when you download a track would you be entitled to both versions?

Hi Parawind

I honestly don't know the answer to this. I will chase this for you and get you a response as soon as I can. I would like to know also, so thanks for the query.
Hope to have an answer early next week.
Tony

Dingatron

Looks like theres plans for the mobile devices.

Link courtesy of Dman001

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/new-media/item/19661-eircom-plans-mobile-apps/

eircom: Tony

Parawind wrote: »

So you can download mp3 files but is there any intention to provide FLAC downloads of the tracks? If so will you be charging more for FLAC downloads or when you download a track would you be entitled to both versions?

Hi Parawind

I have been advised that at the moment there are no plans to provide any other formats other than MP3. There are plans to expand MusicHub and any info I do get on this I will post here.
Tony

Parawind

eircom: Tony wrote: »

Hi Parawind

I have been advised that at the moment there are no plans to provide any other formats other than MP3. There are plans to expand MusicHub and any info I do get on this I will post here.
Tony

Shame but thanks for finding out.

shano

Are there any plans to integrate with last.fm in order to "scrobble" tracks listened to on the site? Thanks.

eircom: Tony

Hi Shano
thanks for posting your question. No word on integration with last.fm as yet. I will check with the Music hub developers for future development plans.
Tony

Resi12

Hey guys when will laser use become available? Great service by the way and could you also tell me what form (mp3, aac) and bitrate the tracks you download come to?

Also is there any way to remember your log-in details as it's a bit tedious having to enter them in.

eircom: Tony

Resi12 wrote: »

Hey guys when will laser use become available? Great service by the way and could you also tell me what form (mp3, aac) and bitrate the tracks you download come to?

Also is there any way to remember your log-in details as it's a bit tedious having to enter them in.

Hi Resi12
happy you like MusicHub service and thanks for your questions. I will put these to our MusicHub online support team and get back to you today or tomorrow.
Tony:)

Butch Cassidy

How many accounts can you sign up from one account/phone number? I live in a house with a few people who have their own computers on the one broadband connection.

eircom: Tony

Butch Cassidy wrote: »

How many accounts can you sign up from one account/phone number? I live in a house with a few people who have their own computers on the one broadband connection.

Hi ButchCassidy
I am afraid you can only have one MusicHub account per eircom line account. The only way to allow other accounts would be to sign up as a non eircom customer, which does work out more expensive.
You can view all offers here.
Tony

eircom: Tony

Resi12 wrote: »

Hey guys when will laser use become available? Great service by the way and could you also tell me what form (mp3, aac) and bitrate the tracks you download come to?

Also is there any way to remember your log-in details as it's a bit tedious having to enter them in.

Hi Resi12

There is no update available on laser payments at present. Bitrate is 320 kbps mp3 and 128kbps aac+ streaming.

We have no way of remembering username/password at present but we will put it down as a future requirement.

Hope this answers your questions. We will do our best to inform MusicHub customers of any upgrades / changes.
Thanks
Tony

Butch Cassidy

eircom: Tony wrote: »

Hi ButchCassidy
I am afraid you can only have one MusicHub account per eircom line account. The only way to allow other accounts would be to sign up as a non eircom customer, which does work out more expensive.
You can view all offers here.
Tony

So in a house where there is a family of a few people with their own laptops and music taste only one of them can have an account or they have to share the one account? That's stupid.

eircom: Tony

shano wrote: »

Are there any plans to integrate with last.fm in order to "scrobble" tracks listened to on the site? Thanks.

Hi shano
no, afraid no plans for this at the moment. We will post any info of developments to Boards.ie when we have this information.
Tony

Moke

Surprised you have no plans of last.fm linking, I would think that since your service is quite small you'd want it to work with one of, if not the, most popular music site on the internet.

eircom: Tony

Moke wrote: »

Surprised you have no plans of last.fm linking, I would think that since your service is quite small you'd want it to work with one of, if not the, most popular music site on the internet.

Hi Moke
good point. As a new service I am sure there will be more expansion along with a growing music library, but at the moment not aware of any plans to link.
I hope to be able to post any upcoming changes here.
Regards
Tony