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Pressplay teams with MSFT
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July 12, 2001: 2:51 p.m. ET
Online music service will use MSN, Windows Media technology
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Pressplay, an online music subscription service backed by Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group, said Thursday it has reached a deal to distribute its music on Microsoft's MSN Internet service.
Under the terms of their agreement, Pressplay, whose service is scheduled to be launched later this summer, and Microsoft will develop a co-branded MSN Music site, giving the service's roughly five million subscribers access to the catalog of music offered by Sony and Universal.
The music will be delivered using Microsoft's Windows Media digital streaming media format.
Based in New York City, Pressplay, formerly called Duet, also lists Internet media company Yahoo! among its distribution partners.
Subscribers are expected to pay a flat monthly fee, estimated between $10 and $15, to get the music on the service, which will compete against an alternative service backed by three other record labels.
MusicNet, under development by other record labels, EMI, BMG and AOL Time Warner, CNNfn's corporate parent, is expected to be released later this year. In April, RealNetworks, whose dominant RealPlayer streaming media platform is Microsoft's top rival in the streaming media technology market, threw its weight behind MusicNet.
Microsoft has poured a lot of its resources into developing its Media Player, which is a standard part of its Windows operating system, and it has been trying to displace RealNetworks as the top supplier of digital media technology.
Initially, MusicNet will license its platform to America Online and RealNetworks, each of which plans to launch branded online subscription services later this year.
However, it also will license to other distribution outlets, including beleaguered file-swapping service Napster, provided such outlets satisfy legal, copyright and security concerns.
Shares of Microsoft (MSFT: up $4.81 to $71.31, Research, Estimates), which said Wednesday it will hit its operating-profit targets for the second quarter on stronger-than-expected revenue, were up more than 6 percent in afternoon Nasdaq trade.
At the same time, RealNetworks (RNWK: up $1.12 to $11.47, Research, Estimates) shares were up nearly 10 percent. 
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