Music sharing is one the biggest issues of the online world at the moment, almost everyone has some kind of MP3 software installed and because the record labels think it's bad for their industry they want stricter laws and have developed a paid alternative.
One of them is MusicNet, this service allows you to pick from a selection of songs from major record labels and download them for a fee. Also Pressplay has a service like this. But it seems they are a big failure:
It isn't hard to see why. MusicNet's main owners '” AOL Time Warner Inc., EMI Group PLC and Bertelsmann AG, along with fourth partner RealNetworks Inc., a Seattle software company '” created a service that lacked just about everything that makes online music downloads appealing. It didn't allow consumers to keep downloaded songs permanently. It didn't allow them to transfer songs to portable devices or exchange them with friends who weren't signed up to the service. And it charged a monthly fee. Renegade Internet services allow all that and more, for no charge. |
Since the launch, MusicNet has attracted only about 40,000 subscribers. Critics have panned it. AOL Time Warner's America Online service, which was supposed to be MusicNet's biggest distributor, says it wants something better before it will introduce the service. MusicNet plans soon to offer about 100,000 music tracks, but it still has enormous gaps in its collection '” most notably, all the artists whose work is controlled by the two biggest recording companies, Sony Corp. and Vivendi Universal SA. They have created their own struggling online venture, called pressplay.
So now, as free sites continue to attract millions of users and before most of the public has even heard of MusicNet , its backers are trying to fix it. 'The first offering was too clunky and too consumer unfriendly to hold much hope for its success," says Richard Parsons, AOL Time Warner's incoming chief executive. 'So we are going to go back, and we will come out with a 2.0 product which will be more consumer friendly, easy to use. ... This is a business of trial and error."
I really wonder if there is any CD Freaks visitor that at least gave this service a try and would like to tell us how he/she likes it !
Source: MSNBC
