Finland, CDON: Record Companies Need to Speed Up

In an effort to impact the industry and drive development of more consumer friendly formats, Nordics leading entertainment e-tailer CDON, now have decided to stop selling the unpopular WMA-format. Starting today all digital music files will be available in the more accessible MP3-format.

For quite some time the main record companies have made most of their material accessible only in copy protected WMA-format - a format proven to be incompatible with most widely spread digital music players like iPod and many music phones.

According to CDON CEO Mikael Olander lack of compatible formats probably have furthered illegal downloading which is why CDON in an effort to impact the industry has decided to stop collaboration with record companies that does not provide the more consumer friendly MP3-format.

- The record companies have an obligation to make sure that there are legal alternatives. If these companies don't provide useable formats we will continue to see negative sales numbers for the music industry. It's only with legal workable alternatives we can prohibit illegal downloads and so far the music industry have been way to slow, says CDON CEO Mikael Olander.

As CDON now fully focuses their music download section on MP3, 2.5 million songs are currently available to download and many more will continuously be added. Among the record companies CDON has managed to sign agreements with in Finland, EMI, the Orchard and Playground can be mentioned. But according to Olander many more record companies need to jump on the train to be able to impact illegal downloads.

- I hope and believe that the record companies now will listen to consumers and give them relevant formats.

On CDON.com top list songs cost on average EUR 0.99 and albums are sold for average of EUR 9,90. CDON operates local sites in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.

For further information please contact: 

Fredrik Skärheden, Head of Press

MTG Online

fredrik.skarheden@mtgonline.se

+46 (0)736 99 27 09