You know what they say, the downloadable music business is kind of like the weather in New England: if you don't like what you see, close your eyes and wait thirty seconds... and when you open them again, you'll find yourself knee-deep in a flash flood with frostbitten elbows, bugs in your teeth, and your hair on fire. The music situation in the U.S. is still pretty stable, actually; iTunes started on top and it stayed on top, despite the subsequent arrival of about eleventy-kajillion pretenders to the throne, several of which have since "refocused" (e.g. BuyMusic.com deflating into just more stuff on Buy.com) or gotten increasingly desperate (e.g. Napster's "we're losing money like crazy so we're giving away free hardware" strategy). But in Europe things are different. Apple was late to that party, and it's not at all certain which service will emerge from the fray with the biggest chunk of market share and its head still attached to its neck.

You're probably aware of the major players at this point: there's Apple, of course, whose iTunes Music Store just launched in the UK, Germany, and France a week ago and should reach the rest of Europe by October; there's Napster, who launched a UK-only service a month ago; there's Sony, whose Connect service will launch in Europe before the month is out; and then there's OD2, who's been selling downloadable music in Europe (both directly and indirectly) for two years running and therefore has a major head start.

So how does the competition stack up? Well, ignoring its subscription business (since everybody else seems to-- burn!!!), songs from Napster cost 38% more than they do from the iTMS in the single European market they currently share. Sony's still a wild card, since it hasn't launched yet, but it sells music in its own ATRAC format that's only compatible with Sony portable players; sure, that's equivalent to Apple's FairPlay AAC tracks only working on iPods, except that most people with players have iPods. And OD2? Well, considering that it both sells its music directly to the consumer and also provides all the behind-the-curtains stuff for anyone else who wants to launch an online music store, like MyCokeMusic.com, it should be in great shape, right?. Especially with the two-year head start and all.

Except that it just got the heck out of Dodge.

No really, it's true, mostly! Faithful viewer Martin tipped us off; a Reuters article confirms that OD2 has just sold out to Loudeye, who does a similar sort of thing here in the States, "allowing a business to launch their own branded music store and service for a fraction of the typical upfront financial and time investment." According to Reuters, "OD2's long-held position as Europe's primary digital download provider has evaporated" in the past month with all the new heavy-hitters invading its turf, so it's "bracing for a competitive onslaught" by exiting the direct sales market altogether. Instead, the new Loudeye-OD2 entity plans to "fend off well-capitalized rivals" by becoming solely a "back-end supplier to the big players, providing digitized music services to dozens of retail partners in Europe and North America."

Run! RUN SCREAMING, YOU COWARDS!! Mwaaaa-hahahahahahahaaaaaaa!!

But seriously, folks, it's not so much a chicken's way out as it is a smart chicken's way out; the peeps at OD2 knew full well that if anyone is to come out of the download wars on top, it won't be them. So given that every company now "needs" an online music store the way they all "needed" web sites in 1997, why shouldn't OD2 align themselves with a similar service provider and team up building the Lenscrafters Music Store, IHOP's International House of Downloads, Bounty's Quicker Loader-Downer, I Can't Believe It's Not iTunes™, etc.? Not that we aren't sorry to see them duck out before the real fun begins-- when it comes to all-out brawls like the European download market is about to become, the more the merrier. Sigh... One fewer body for the pile...