Yesterday, FT published an status update on British Sky Broadcasting’s (BSkyB) strategic move into the music business. The launch of the new service is scheduled for 19 October 2009, according to Brand Republic. This move doesn’t come by surprise as the Guardian and other news services have written about this move already earlier this year. According to the FT article, BSkyB has secured the back catalogues and new releases from the four major record companies EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal and Warner Music, and a number of independent record labels and distributors. Through these deals, BSkyB can offer around 4 million songs.

BSkyB will offer a bundled service comprising unlimited streaming and a limited number download-to-own of tracks and albums package for a monthly flat fee starting at GBP 6.45 and the next bigger package at GBP 7.99. If a customer wants to download more than included in the monthly package, he/she can also buy additional track for GBP 0.65 a track or entire albums for GBP 6.49 a piece.

Similar to Napster, Nokia and Rhapsody, BSkyB will offer a subscription-based service to lure away customers from Apple’s market-leading track-by-track purchasing model for iTunes. And unlike Stockholm-based Spotify and We7, the service will not rely on an radio-style advertising model. While all these these business models may pay off as the customer base grows big, the question remains, whether the purely ad-based models are sustainable enough given the increase in competition in this field with other big media and telco power houses British Telecom (BT) thinking about moving into this space.