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VietNamNet Bridge – Experts have warned that technically, it would be very difficult for music website administrators to collect fees from music downloads.
Zing Mp3, Nhaccuatui, Socbay, Nhac.vui, GoMusic, Nghenhac – the most well- known music websites in Vietnam, have announced that they would unanimously collect fees for music downloads to be made from November 1, 2012. However, they have been warned that they may not be able to collect fees on websites due to some technical problems.
In fact, service providers have been charging music downloads for a long time already. For example, clients have to pay 3000 dong to download a song form chacha.vn (VinaPhone) or 5000 dong for unlimited downloads for 7 days. Meanwhile, xalo.vn (Tinhvan) charges 3000 dong for every song, 5000 dong for every album, or 15,000 dong for downloads within three days. Socbay.vn (Naiscrorp) charges 15,000 dong on the downloads of 17 songs.
However, as for the website version, the websites allow clients to download mp3 files to their computers free of charge.
Commenting about the opinion that it would be more difficult to collect fees on websites than mobile phones, Nguyen Xuan Tai, General Director of Naiscorp, has affirmed that the difficulties are in the same level, saying that if clients want to pay fees, they would be able to make payment this or another way.
Disagreeing with Tai, Phan Anh Tuan, Deputy Director of VTC Online, has affirmed that it would be much easier to collect fee on mobile phones than on websites.
Tuan said that on mobile phones, users have convenient payment channels, while they have less alternative content on mobile phones than on websites.
On Internet, users would have to have bank accounts if they want to make payment for downloads, while not everyone has bank account in Vietnam. Besides, the risks in online payment would make users hesitate to use this payment method. Meanwhile, they would feel more secure if making payment from their mobile phones.
He has also anticipated that a lot of users would not be ready to pay for music downloads. They would rather to seek the same contents from other sources, like other websites or forums than downloading music from exactly the websites to be charged.
“At VTC Online, providing content services on mobile phones has been bringing better profits than on websites in the last few years,” Tuan said.
Nguyen Manh Ha, General Director of VMG, also said that it would be easier to calculate and collect fees on the mobile phones, because mobile environment is the concentrated environment put under the control of network operators.
Meanwhile, on the Internet environment, due to its “openness” characteristic, users would have many alternatives to obtain the songs they want, rather than paying fees to download music. The members of forums would be able to share music pieces with others, which means that other members can also enjoy the music pieces free of charge.
It’s obvious that users would try all possible means to enjoy music pieces free of charge before thinking of paying money for services. This explains why Apple has to create iPhone to be able to sell music on iTunes. The key here lies in the fact that users have to use iTunes to be able to download music, while they cannot find what they want on any other websites.
Also according to Tai, users have the habit of enjoying music pieces free of charge for the last many years, and they can find music pieces from many different sources. Therefore, it would be not an easy task to collect fees from music downloads.
Tuan said he hopes that 3-5 percent of people who download music pieces would pay fees for the service.
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