Spain's Terra to Offer Online Film and Music in Europe

MADRID - Telefonica's media unit Terra plans to introduce online films and music in Europe, starting with Spain and Portugal by the end of next month, news reports said Monday.

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No one was immediately available to confirm the report that said the Terra website, which clocks some 100 million visits per month in the Americas, will offer a music service called Sonora in Spain, followed by a film site SundayTV in the fourth quarter. A Bloomberg report quoted a source that asked not to be identified saying Terra would expand to other European countries in 2013.

According to the report, Terra is looking to supplement the content offered through Sonora and SundayTV and is in talks with music companies and film studios like Universal, Fox, Walt Disney and Warner Bros. And it is seeking to head the Iberian initiative with an executive from Facebook or Google.

Spain is still a pristine market for legal online film consumption like Netflix, though it boasts a vibrant pirated market and a host of sites featuring illegal downloads of new released content. According to Spanish Anti-Piracy Federation, more than 77 percent of the digital content consumed in Spain in the first half of 2011 was pirated, worth an estimated €5.2 billion ($6.88 billion) to the music, film, publishing and videogame sectors.

Telefonica, the Spanish telecom titan, has been looking to counter plummeting sales from core business due to increased competition, lower consumption and rampant unemployment in Spain by tapping into the digital sphere. In September, the company created a new subdivision to cluster all its digital business under one umbrella.