Sky Music is falling

Sky Music, BSkyB's attempt to spin its massive user base into a subscription-based music service is being junked as, erm, nobody was interested:

A Sky spokesman said: "We've taken the difficult decision to close Sky Songs. Although we are extremely proud of the service we built and the experience it offers, we just didn't see the consumer demand we'd hoped for.

"As Sky Songs demonstrates, we're a business that takes risks and innovates, but at the same time, we're pragmatic and act decisively when a new venture isn't working out."

The deal was one of those awkward ones where you could stream as much as you wanted, and download and own a miserly-and-randomly-chosen five tracks a month. It's not entirely clear what the Sky spokesperson believes was "innovative" about that.

Even a price cut from an eye-watering £7.99 to £4.99 couldn't shift subscriptions and the obvious move - give it away as a sweetener with Sky Broadband - seems to have been dropped.

Although customers are going to be refunded this evening, the site is still taking sign-ups at the moment. I suppose there's so few they don't really expect anyone to create an account between now and 6pm.