U.K. Supplier Pure Bows ‘FlowSongs’ Cloud-Based Music Service

LONDON -- “Buy music direct from your radio” is the promise of U.K. receiver supplier Pure, which went live Monday with the beta version of a new cloud music service called FlowSongs. Anyone listening to broadcast music on one of Pure’s Internet-connected Flow radios will be able to click on a radio button when they hear a song they like, and automatically purchase it for future streaming, or download to a PC for transfer to portable devices.

Once the beta trials in the U.K. are complete, Pure plans to roll out the service internationally later this year, in all countries where it sells radios, including the U.S. FlowSongs uses 7digital’s online music store which sells digital music in more than 20 countries, and offers more than 10 million tracks. Track identification is by the Shazam audio fingerprinting service, which matches music with a database of over 8 million tracks. The service works with either analog or digital broadcasts, or Internet radio, of any standard.

"Hear it and buy it, even though you don’t know what it’s called,” said Pure Director of Marketing Colin Crawford. “When you hear a track from any radio station on a Flow radio, you just push the ‘buy’ button, confirm your account PIN and the track is stored in your account on the Lounge website that Flow radios can access for streaming. You can also download to a Windows PC or Mac, in high-quality MP3, usually at 320 kbps. There’s no DRM so you can then transfer it to any other device."

Costs average less than $2 a track, plus an annual subscription fee under $5. “The money then flows direct to the labels and copyright bodies,” said Ben Drury, CEO of 7digital. “The radio station takes no cut, and a purchase counts as a download in the charts."

The FlowSongs business model was hailed by PRS for Music Chief Economist Will Page. The copyright body represents songwriters, composers and music publishers. “This FlowSongs music service sows all the same seeds of success that YouTube offered back in the summer of 2006 by giving the fan instant gratification -- you hear it, like it and now you can buy it,” Page said.

Pure, part of the Imagination Technologies Group, has been in business for 10 years, and eight years ago kick-started the sales of DAB in the U.K. with Evoke, the first affordable digital radio. Pure now sells five Internet-connected Flow models: Sensia, Evoke Flow, Avanti Flow, Oasis Flow and Siesta Flow, with more models on the way. “FlowSongs is just the start of a number of new services,” Crawford said.