Speaker manufacturer launches download club

07:49 | Monday May 19, 2008

For a six-monthly or annual subscription, members of the Bowers & Wilkins Music Club will receive one specially-recorded album a month. Each release will be recorded at the Real World studios in Bath exclusively for the club by what the company describes as “new and established artists”.

The albums will be available to download in the Apple lossless format for one month only, without DRM.

Then, two months after the album is offered to members, B&W returns the rights to the artists, in a move that the company claims will give a boost to new acts and allow bigger names to experiment.

“This is quite a natural thing for us to do,” says B&W brand director Dan Haikin. We get hundreds of email asking ‘What should I buy to make the speakers sound great?’ It seemed quite natural to go from that to making beautiful recordings.”

However, he says that it is not B&W’s intention to become a record label. “What we are trying to do is tantalise our consumers, rather than become a music company,” he says. “We thought that unique music was a way of making the whole thing more tantalising. It’s not a business; it’s a way of bringing together people all over the world who like Bowers & Wilkins.”

In keeping with this ethic, B&W’s Society Of Sound website (www.bowers-wilkins.com/sos) offers what the company describes as “a diverse community site, created for people with a passion for sound”, including blogs, feature articles and podcasts.

Possible future plans for the Music Club include arranging meetings for members and staging gigs.