Word: pressplay
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Long before the Music Store came on the scene, frantic record-industry executives had been searching for some way to combat their nemesis: Napster, the original file-sharing service, but to no avail. Their first online ventures, MusicNet and PressPlay, were disasters, largely because the labels didn't trust their users--or one another. High subscription fees and poor selections turned off would-be customers; most skulked off to the underground services, such as Kazaa and Limewire, which had sprung up after Napster's demise...
...songs "streamed," or played as if the customer were listening to the radio, has doubled to more than 500,000 a day since April. But competition from illegal downloading services has put the legit pioneers through a lot of corporate turmoil. Listen.com was bought this summer by RealNetworks; Pressplay, the service begun by record labels Universal and Sony, is now owned by softwaremaker Roxio, which also bought the rights to the defunct Napster brand; MusicNet, begun by the three other big labels, is now offered by America Online (which, like TIME, is owned by AOL Time Warner). Yet the growing...
...Internet offers a whole new way of selling music, and when music and movie executives are not expressing their outrage over downloading, they are salivating over a potentially massive revenue opportunity. There are already a couple of dozen legal, pay-to-play downloading services, including Pressplay, Listen.com's Rhapsody and Music Net. Apple Computer has a new service, which was slated for rollout this Monday, that's meant to integrate seamlessly with its iPod MP3 player and its iTunes music software. Movie and TV downloading websites are sprouting up as well. Movielink, which is backed by five major Hollywood studios...
...these services face competition you wouldn't wish on Bill Gates. Unlike, say, Kazaa, they have to clear each song or movie or show for digital distribution with each individual artist and studio. They have made significant progress--Pressplay, for example, has upwards of 300,000 tracks available for download, with membership starting at $9.95 a month--but it's slow work. The for-pay services also mire users in a mesh of restrictions that limit what they can do with the music they download. That $9.95 plan at Pressplay buys you unlimited downloads, but you can't move...
...Pressplay and the other "legitimate" music services are more reliable than Kazaa and its ilk. For one thing, there's no porn and no spoofing, and Apple's new offering is expected to give the whole process a more streamlined, user-friendly feel. These services also give customers the peace of mind that comes with not breaking the law. It will be interesting to see how much that's worth. But for now listeners are staying away in droves; industry analysts estimate that the legitimate downloading services have fewer than 300,000 users in all. Still, if the retail-music...