Bandwidth should not be an issue as there are websites that with give you unlimited bandwidth and storage space for under $20 bucks a month. So anyone in theory could open shop. And if it is an issue, it's not much of one and would just be added to the cost of a DL. Here is one of many options:
MyDomain hosting plans:
http://www.mydomain.com/hosting/
I don't see why one of us just don't open a site and licence the material from the record companies.
To answer the last question first, the labels will not license. We have tried. They start to talk, but as soon as you get into the details they stop.
You get the run-around, and passed from person to person, then it all changes when the labels play musical desks every 6 to 9 months and have to start over yet again.
Never mind getting Quad from the vaults, you cannot even get the bloody tapes your own band made out of Universal.
And this was in conjunction with another company who already have worldwide distribution in place, yet the labels will not even consider just UK/Eire license.
Not a hope in hell.
Personally, and I am sorry but this may come across badly, I do not give a stuff about the constant "poor record companies" line.
When DVDA first launched in the UK, it took me 5 days to even find a player for sale anywhere - and this was in LONDON!!
I went to the megastores on Oxford street looking for discs, and got told - this is 100% true - the following:
"Yes, we have DVDA up in the stockroom, but it's not going on display because we don't know where to rack it and we have absolutely no pubilicity & promotional material from the labels".
As has been pointed out here Ad Nauseam - you cannot buy what is not on the shelves.
Surround sales are low because most people have no bloody idea about it's existence, and because the labels totally failed to market it.
Moving on to costs.
Why is it so expensive for the "poor labels" please, Jimby?
Sorry, but I do not understand this claim. It's no more expensive to mix in 5.1 than in stereo - if anything it is faster & therefore cheaper, and authoring does not need to be stupidly expensive either. Okay, when you start adding scads of graphical & video footage it gets a little more complex but you do not HAVE to do it this way.
What is wrong with straight DVDA/V, and no visuals? Autoplay the disc (no screens needed) and perhaps have one page where you pick the format you want - stereo or surround?
Such a disc would take me about 2 hours to put together. Where is the expense?
Sorry, but I am minded here of the councils in the UK who are closing libraries down because of the "wicked tory cuts" yet still pay their chief executives 300,000 pounds a year plus fucking bonses!! If the labels spent a little less on signing acts like Robbie Williams & Mariah Carey for tens of millions of pounds, and spent a little more on promoting new talent I may just have a bit of sympathy, but given the massive advance to Ms Carey and the equally massive payoff to go away again and I am stumped here.
OQG, doing this via websites is a nice idea, but no thanks.
Files are only half of this - and can easily get lost/deleted/corrupted, and written discs fail regularly.
In addition, the packaging is part of the art - and I guess it goes to show how the labels think of music these days where all we get are shitty MP3 files and an entire generation who not only think this is how music is supposed to sound, but who also think a fucking telephone is a good thing to play music on.
I want silvers please - and replication of CD/DVD-A/V double packs is cheap.
Press 5,000 to 10,000 and see how it goes - you will break even at least with the right content, mixed & mastered properly.
Less crap like the SACD of Layla, and the dreadful (in the main) rubbish from Silverline (not their fault) bwhere they seem to have upmixed large amounts of titles.
Additionally, sticking a fuck-off long reverb in the rears & squashing the living snot out of L/R ain't 5.1 either. It's big stereo.
Get the content right, and it will sell.
The constant "Piracy is killing music" is a piss poor excuse. Home taping did not kill sales in the 60's, 70's & 80's and MP3 downloads will not do it now. Downloaders fall into 2 categories....
1 - those who take because they can, and because they see it as free.
2 - those who try first, and then buy - I spend over £150/month on music where I can but it is a bastard finding stuff I want to buy.
Finally, the labels ought to stop moaning about the downloaders all the time they perpetuate the "music is free" crap by constantly giving it away in newspapers - talk about sending the wrong message.....
How does this go? Let me see.....
"music is not free and you should buy what you listen to or you will kill the industry".
followed by "free in this week's News of the World, the latest CD/DVD by The Some Fucking Band".
I have - somewhere - an issue of PRS magazine where it stated that sales fell in a year by 31%, and in the following sentence it went on to say that major label releases in the same period were down by 34% - that, according to my maths - is an increase in real terms.
FINAL EDIT
Sorry to have ranted here, and I am very sorry if I managed to offend anyone, but I get so sick of hearing about the "poor record companies".