Six major music providers have agreed to a plan to charge users a fee to
download copyrighted music, it was announced at a recent seminar on
digital music held in HCM City.
Effective on
November 1, users may listen to music online for free but must pay 1,000
VND (0.05 US cent) for each song they download.
About a
quarter of the nation's population uses internet. Over three quarters of
those use online music services, but 85 percent of them don't pay for
the copyrighted content, said Phung Tien Cong, deputy director of MV
Corp, a multi-sectoral technology group. Collecting royalties for
downloaded songs would fight copyright infringement and help the online
music market develop, he said.
The seminar was organised
by MV Corp, the Vietnam Centre for Protection of Music Copyright and the
Recording Industry Association of Vietnam.-VNA