Thursday, August 1, 2002
Gasp! Is the music industry starting to listen?
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "ARTICLE" @ 12:00 PM
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/3777666.htm
"Pressplay has removed the limitations that stifled growth of the paid service, introducing a new version that allows subscribers to stream or download music to their heart's content and buy tracks they can burn on CDs or transfer to portable players." Hallelujah! It seems they are figuring out that we will not rent music nor will we pay a dime for content we can only listen to on the PC it was downloaded to.
"Pressplay subscribers, who until now have had to wade through a confusing array of offers, will pay a flat monthly fee of $9.95 to download or stream as much music as they like. Songs are protected from being burned to CD or transferred. For slightly more -- $17.95 a month -- subscribers get 10 songs, which they permanently own and can burn to CD or transfer to portable devices, such as the popular Rio player, CreativeLabs' Nomad line and Compaq's iPAQ, that support the Windows Media Player format."
$17.95 per month. That is $1.80 per song, or $21.60 for a CD's worth of 12 songs. Well, their pricing isn't there yet but at least they get the model. I don't know about you but I am not willing to pay $215 a year for this regardless of how many songs you get. There are just not 120 good songs that come out every year in my opinion, and I'd still buy the CD of artists I like. The other pitfall is the library. "Its collection of 100,000 downloadable tracks is still limited to Universal and Sony artists, and music licensed by a third major label, EMI Recorded Music, and various independents." Still, this is clearly a move in the right direction.
Hmmm.... they have Mazzy Star. Can't be all bad.
"Pressplay has removed the limitations that stifled growth of the paid service, introducing a new version that allows subscribers to stream or download music to their heart's content and buy tracks they can burn on CDs or transfer to portable players." Hallelujah! It seems they are figuring out that we will not rent music nor will we pay a dime for content we can only listen to on the PC it was downloaded to.
"Pressplay subscribers, who until now have had to wade through a confusing array of offers, will pay a flat monthly fee of $9.95 to download or stream as much music as they like. Songs are protected from being burned to CD or transferred. For slightly more -- $17.95 a month -- subscribers get 10 songs, which they permanently own and can burn to CD or transfer to portable devices, such as the popular Rio player, CreativeLabs' Nomad line and Compaq's iPAQ, that support the Windows Media Player format."
$17.95 per month. That is $1.80 per song, or $21.60 for a CD's worth of 12 songs. Well, their pricing isn't there yet but at least they get the model. I don't know about you but I am not willing to pay $215 a year for this regardless of how many songs you get. There are just not 120 good songs that come out every year in my opinion, and I'd still buy the CD of artists I like. The other pitfall is the library. "Its collection of 100,000 downloadable tracks is still limited to Universal and Sony artists, and music licensed by a third major label, EMI Recorded Music, and various independents." Still, this is clearly a move in the right direction.
Hmmm.... they have Mazzy Star. Can't be all bad.
