Raising the stakes of digital music distribution, last month EMI, AOL Time Warner and BMG, along with RealNetworks, announced a brand new platform that would be ready for launch this summer. MusicNet will offer licensed content from the above three (of the five) major record companies, including material from big-name artists such as Madonna, Robbie Williams and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
The technology behind the initiative is the new RealSystem iQ platform, which, together with the musical content, will be licensed to any online service that wants to distribute the tracks. Initial distribution partners will be the vast AOL, with 29 million subscribers worldwide, and Real.com whose free RealPlayer has 190 million registered users. Other companies that want to rent out the service will have to adopt the technology as well as with the content, even in the case of sites such as MP3.com which has its own platform in operation. So far, none of the major high street retailers have shown any intention to become partners.
Users will be able to both listen to and download tracks from the service, but it will be up to the distributors how much each track will cost the user, or whether it will be a time-limited subscription. The system will be launched during the summer, initially in the US before rolling out worldwide later in the year, a movie which is likely to irritate potential users living outside the US.
And companies still believe that people will stop using programs such as Napster, hmm!!
Source: .Net
