Barry Fox ponders whether Pure's new 'cloud' music service, FlowSongs, could be the new iTunes

When I first tried a Pure Flow radio, I cursed the convoluted internet setup routine. All the hassle over registering the radio with Pure’s Lounge website seemed an unnecessary obstacle to just listening to internet radio stations. Now I see Pure’s game plan.

The new cloud service called FlowSongs, which goes live in the UK in beta version on Monday August 16, lets anyone listening to any radio station (analogue, digital or internet), click on a radio button when they hear a song they like.

Their Lounge account then identifies the track and purchases it for future streaming, or download to a PC and transfer to portable devices.

FlowSongs uses 7digital’s online music store which sells digital music in over 20 countries, and offers more than 10 million tracks; track identification is by the Shazam audio fingerprinting service which matches music with a database of over 8 million tracks. So the radio station does not need to broadcast any music labelling tags.

“Hear it and buy it, even though you don’t know what it’s called” says Pure’s director of marketing, Colin Crawford.

“When you hear a track from any radio station on a Flow radio, you just push the Buy Button and confirm your account PIN.”

The purchased music can then be streamed at any time to the Flow radio or downloaded to a Windows or Mac PC, in high quality MP3, usually at 320 kbps. There’s no DRM so you can then transfer it to any other device.Costs range from 79p to £1.29 per track, plus an annual access subscription of £2.99.

“The money then flows direct to the labels and copyright bodies. The radio station takes no cut” says Ben Drury, CEO 7digital. “And a purchase counts as a download in the charts.”

Pure now sells five internet-connected Flow models, Sensia, Evoke Flow, Avanti Flow, Oasis Flow and Siesta Flow, with more promised.

“FlowSongs is just the start or a number of new services” says Crawford.

Will FlowSongs be the new iTunes? Only time will tell.

Barry Fox