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Music.not
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December 21, 2001: 5:52 p.m. ET
The major labels -- with the help of AOL, MSN, and Yahoo -- have launched their alternatives to Napster. Too bad they stink.
By David Futrelle
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - A parable for our digital age: Once upon a time there was a restaurant owner -- let's just call him Mr. Recording Industry -- who had made a good living selling reheated leftovers at inflated prices. Then one day, a new restaurant opened up next door offering an endless all-you-can eat buffet for the low, low price of nothing at all.
Mr. Industry convinced the authorities to shut it down -- something about code violations -- but several similar restaurants sprang up almost overnight. To compete, Mr. Industry implemented an innovative food subscription plan where for a modest monthly fee, customers would be allowed to chew (but not swallow) a limited selection of foodstuffs. At the end of the month, they'd be forced to cough up more money, or spit out all the food.
Bizarre? Nonsensical? Absurd? Well, yes, yes and yes. But it's also, more or less, what the recording industry is doing to fight off the threat from Napster-style file-swapping services.
On Wednesday, Sony Music Entertainment and Vivendi's Universal Music Group announced a limited rollout of its music subscription offering, called pressplay, which will be available to subscribers through Yahoo and MSN.
For $9.95 a month, subscribers get access to 300 "streams" (a one-time listen, as you would with a radio) and 30 downloads (in which you pull a song onto your computer's hard drive, where you can listen to it over an over again). Those willing to shell out more dough will get more "streams" and the ability to burn a limited selection of tracks onto CDs -- though no more than two from any given artist.
Aside from the tracks they burn to CD, none of the streams or downloads will be theirs to keep. That's right. Subscribers -- assuming there are any -- will be paying ten bucks or more a month to rent access to music they won't own.
Meanwhile, AOL and RealNetworks have launched their own branded versions of the MusicNet subscription service, which, for $9.95 a month, allows subscribers to download or stream 100 songs from the extensive music catalogs of Warner Music Group, BMG Entertainment and EMI. But subscribers won't be allowed to burn any songs onto CD. And if they cancel their subscriptions their music will go "poof."
With the various entities involved still working to get their systems running smoothly -- and evidently still trying to figure out their various pricing options -- no one seems to be doing much to publicize these new ventures.
I found the link to Yahoo! pressplay buried underneath a profile of alleged "breakout artist" Hoobastank ("Rock out with new California band!") on Yahoo's "Launch" music site. And the MusicNet Web page, last I checked, doesn't even mention AOL's recent launch of its service -- though, to be fair, AOL's MusicNet service is still officially in its "beta" stage.
But even the biggest and most expensive advertising campaigns in the world might not be able to make these plans palatable to a broad audience. Don't believe me? Then take a look at the comically elaborate set of restrictions that pressplay imposes on its subscribers. ("If you choose to cancel your pressplay membership, you will lose the ability to play the downloads that you acquired through pressplay at the end of the period you paid through.... At the beginning of each billing period, your streams reset to the amount allotted in your membership plan regardless of whether you have unused streams left over from the prior month.")
The big record labels are in a tough spot. Though they've managed to get Napster shut down, various file-sharing alternatives have sprung up in its wake, some of them even easier to use than Napster and all of them more difficult to shut down. Aaccording to researchers at Webnoize, they're already more popular with music sharers than Napster was at its peak.
But I still have to believe that many of those now downloading tracks for free would be willing to pay a reasonable subscription price for a "legitimate" service that didn't impose too many onerous restrictions on them -- and that actually let them keep the music they paid for. Too bad the big labels aren't willing to give them the choice.
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