In a movement to try to fight the trend of illegally downloading music and videos from internet, Bol.bg, MVBox.bg and Star Records has started a new low-fee service called "New Bol.bg service - a possibility for legal Bulgarian music download".

On April 5, a news conference was held to announce the new service available through the MVBox website. Representatives of the three companies gathered at Sofia Press to speak to the media.

For first time on the Bulgarian market, an internet provider will be providing its users with the opportunity to legally listen to Bulgarian music with paid copyrights as well.

Bol.bg manager Dimitur Ganchev, Star Records producer, company owner and manager Atanas Yankulov and Dimitur Ganev of MVBox together announced their stance against illegal music downloads, which, according to the three of them, was blatant theft.

The new service is part of the strategy of internet service provider Bol.bg and has been available since the beginning of April absolutely for free for clients of the company, Ganchev said. The music will be downloaded in the popular MP3 format for listening on a MP3 player or at a computer.

Users who are not Bol.bg clients will have the option to download music for the price of five leva a month. For this amount, they will have the opportunity to download all the music available at MVBox and will have the legal right to store it in their computers or burn it on a CD for personal means, and legally keep it even after their monthly subscription expires.

Ganev said that the idea-creators are not painting themselves the illusion that they will succeed to conquer piracy in this way. The companies are trying to give an alternate easy option for music downloading to new internet users who do not have all the skills of hacker and/or time to learn torrent client programmes.

"We think this is the future from the point of view that for each and every one of the clients, as well as for us, it is good to have legal music on one's computer," Ganev said. Every MP3 dowloaded through MVBox has a code, which could be presented in case a subscriber has problems with the authorities, he said. There is a system available to check every MP3 and to prove that it was not downloaded illegally.

Ganev expressed his excitement to be the first in the field to provide such a service and his hope was to be followed by other companies, because, according to him, this was the only way to help one another and the clients to feel secure and content while downloading music. Currently there are about 4000 songs on the site, aiming to become 10 000 in the next six months.

Bol.bg decided to form the contract with MVBox according to which they pay for the music downloaded by their clients, Ganev said. He said everything further depended on the clients and their willingness to use the service.

Yankulov spoke about products of the intellectual property - music, videos, movies, films, etc. According to him, these products were not different from a kilogramme of meat or a wristwatch, for example. The only difference, according to him, was that the materials and labour included in a song were much more than those put into most consumer goods. He included in the price of a song the thousands of leva used to promote it and the creative work that, as he said, "God gives only to a certain few".

In this way, he explained his presence as a representative of the copyright owners who did not receive any financial reward for their work. Yankulov said that downloading copyrighted products illegals was leading the whole industry to the stage of not being able to earn a living. He pointed out how renowned traditional folk singer Yanka Rupkina manages to live thanks only to the milk of her cows.

"Thank God that milk can not be uploaded in digital format, because she would literally die," he said.

This has led to a loss of Bulgaria individuality, Yankulov said.

This is not the first attempt of a company as regards pre-paid music downloading, he said. So far MVBox contains the most data and is made in the most professional way, but there are currently other platforms in development as well, which will soon enter the market.

There was no difference between illegal download and stealing according to Yankulov. With illegal downloads, authors could see how many times their product was downloaded and not receive a single cent for it.

Yankulov said all authors and producers in the field were happy with the initiative but also a bit sceptical because they did not believe that anyone would pay if there was an internet option for downloading for free.

The problem is big, but to move forward it is necessary to fight, he said.

Ganchev of Bol.bg said that one year ago, they had this idea to provide music in return for a small payment, but it took them all this time to convince both music distributors and internet providers of the successful future of this idea, as well as to find partners.

He said consumers would not pay for each and every song and this was why they were providing the service to download an unrestricted amount of music for the same fee.

When questioned as to when they would be able to provide foreign products of the big labels in the field, Ganev said that foreign music and video distributors were still not willing to accept this idea, but MVBox hoped that with the time this fact would change. It was still too costly for Bulgarians to pay one euro for an MP3, he said.

On the question of how much the producers of music would receive from this service, Yankulov said that the amount was not important, but what was important was that it was different than zero. Any sum besides zero was welcome, he said. The basic form of payment with MVBox would be monthly subscription. Ganev further specified that producers and authors would receive money from the number of downloads of their pieces.

Bol.bg was created in 1993 as Kit OOD by Veni Markovski and Dimitur Ganchev as the second company in Bulgarian history to provide internet services. It was the first company to provide the four-in-one services of internet, telephone, digital television and video on demand. It is a leader on the internet services and web design market and also offers additional services such as portals, free e-mail, web page design, internet advertising and e-shops.

In January 2007, the European investment fund CEE Growth Luxembourg SICAR SCI invested a huge amount in Bol.bg, which was a result of market research and possibilities for internet development.

The company foresees the buying of other providers and creating additional partnerships, as well as developing its own network. In the coming year, Bol.bg plans to set up a high-speed optical network in each and every of Sofia's boroughs. Currently, the company employs 80 in 12 offices in Sofia.