HA NOI — Six major music providers have agreed to a plan to charge users a fee to download copyrighted music, it was announced at a seminar on digital music held in HCM City on Wednesday. Effective on November 1, users may listen to music online for free but must pay VND1,000 (0.05 US cent) for each song they download.

About a quarter of the nation's population uses internet. Over three quarters of those use online music services, but 85 per cent of them don't pay for the copyrighted content, said Phung Tien Cong, deputy director of MV Corp, a multi-sectoral technology group. Collecting royalties for downloaded songs would fight copyright infringement and help the online music market develop, he said.

The seminar was organised by MV Corp, the Viet Nam Centre for Protection of Music Copyright and the Recording Industry Association of Viet Nam. — VNS