Oxfam have launch their own OD2-backed music service, Big Noise Music, on 26th May. Instead of scratched vinyl records of ELO’s Out of the Blue, the charity hopes to lure customers with 300,000 pristine tracks. How they’re going to recreate the musty charity shop smell and the insane elderly volunteer staff is anyone’s guess.
Tracks cost the usual UK£0.75 to UK£0.99 (€1.12 to €1.48), with UK£0.10 (€0.15) from each going to Oxfam’s good causes. The site is pan-Europe, but the genius move is that all the prices are in Sterling.
Adrian Lovett, Oxfam’s Director of Campaigns and Communications said in a statement, “Bignoisemusic.com works for everyone. Music lovers get great tracks and artists see their music helping some of the poorest people in the world, through real cash support and by building the worldwide movement to Make Trade Fair.”
The site has received plenty of endorsements from stars, featuring exclusive tracks from George Michael and Coldplay.
Big Noise Music
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.
Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.
At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.
After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.
These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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