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After spending the last two years going over like a Lead Balloon, Pressplay just rebranded itself with the Napster name.

The corporate overlords may want to buy into the customer goodwill that surrounds the Napster brand name instead of the apathy that surrounds the Pressplay brand name, but they're just polishing a turd. People didn't want to rent their music then, and they won't want to rent it now.

The emperor has a little kittyface mask on, but he's still naked.

As a music discovery service, Rhapsody is pretty hard to beat, though Pressplay supposedly comes pretty close. Rhapsody has the bigger catalog and nicer application. Pressplay has downloads, but they're DRM-limited; Rhapsody streams only. Unfortunately, Rhapsody ties you to Windows. I assume Pressplay's DRM does as well, but I haven't explored it that closely.

Having accepted that last caveat, I'm very happy with Rhapsody. There are a few holes in their coverage--modern metal isn't well-represented, nor is old-school rap or some genres of electronica. Their coverage of anything even remotely mainstream is very good, though, and they have a surprising number of indie and semi-indie bands available. One thing that's especially nice is that they can build a streaming radio station around an artist that uses a pretty decent association engine to give you songs that would appeal to the same tastes. This feature works whether or not they have the reference artist's music available for download. Some of the selections aren't completely obvious, but most of them are quite appropriate. That in and of itself is a great discovery tool.

from my blog: Tonight I read about a new online music service called "BuyMusic.Com" for the first time. It is billed as a "iTunes for PC users" and this is a conspicuously empty niche in the music business at the moment. I've looked at other services such as Pressplay and MusicNet, but so far they have all sucked in terms of sound quality, value and ridiculous limitations on what you can do with the music that you legitimately purchase. Is BuyMusic any better? Let's find out. I found the link on the front page of Google news. It was attributed to an article from TechTV.com which comes off as both a commercial for the new service and a fairly harsh dig at Apple and iTunes. They make the point that the tracks are slightly less expensive at BuyMusic ($.79 as opposed to $.99) and the obvious problem that only people who own Macs are currently capable of accessing iTunes. They also make a big deal about the service's music catalog which stands at around 300,000 tracks. So I go to the BuyMusic site. The home page is fairly well designed, with top 100 singles and top album listings front and center. At first glance the selection is about what I would expect - Norah Jones is here, as well as Justin Timberlake, Shania Twain and 50 Cent. Okay, so it's not my favorite music but this is what sells so I can't blame them for putting it up front. The real test will come when I try to find some of my favorite music - in other words, something a music fan (as opposed to a 12 year old girl) might actually want to buy. There are some ads on the page, but nothing too intrusive. One is for Windows Media Player 9, which is interesting because it contains an implementation of Microsoft's latest Digital Rights Management technology. WMP9 is also notable for its very open-ended End User License Agreement (EULA) which means basically that if you install this software then you also give Microsoft the legal right to download and install updates to your computer at any time and without asking for your permission. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I just never liked the sound of that. I wonder if it is a required download to use the service. Yep. That makes the other ad somewhat ironic - it is for a Nomad 20GB MP3 Jukebox. Ironic because regular MP3s don't have any DRM built in and a good DRM system would probably prevent the user from transferring legitimately purchased music onto the player. I have yet to find out exactly what format of music this service is actually selling... Are they MP3s or Microsoft Media Player files or some other proprietary format like the one that Apple is using? Time to forge on and find out... So I begin to look around the page for the catalog navigation buttons. Off to the left is a list of genres... Looking down the list I notice that although there is a separate category for "Blues" there is no category at all for "Dance Music." Weh oh. Not a good sign. So I click on Pop/Rock which I figure is the closest thing to dance music they have listed here. Although it lists twenty-something variations on Pop/Rock such as "Teen Pop" and "Experimental Rock" there is still no indication of dance music. Scrolling down the page I do find an album I like however - John Mayer's "Room for Squares." The album price is listed as $12.69. Not too bad, I tell myself. Clicking onto the album info page I encounter my first harsh truth about BuyMusic: They don't have everything that's listed in their catalog. For example, even though the album price was given as $12.69, a note on the album's page says "For Sale as Individual Tracks Only." Furthermore, only four of the twelve tracks can be downloaded, for $.99 each. The first single

Microsoft has been adamant that the Xbox is and will remain a gaming platform. Period. The knee-jerk reaction to news of additional capabilities, such as voice and music, is "The Xboxes aren't selling as game consoles, so they're trying other applications in hopes of selling more boxes."

This doesn't make much sense when one considers that Microsoft loses money on every Xbox. The bill of materials is $400-$500, and they retail for $200. That difference can't be made up on volume. This business model is to lose money on the consoles but make it back (and then some) on the games, much like the razor/blade model. Games are high-margin products, especially those created in-house, and I would think that the Xbox business case is dependent upon preserving those margins. So pushing the Xbox as an enabler of low-margin services doesn't make much sense. Let's look at those mentioned...

Voice
Sure, Xbox Live voice quality is pretty good. Since Xbox Live requires broadband, it's not tough to obtain toll quality. But why would they want to? There are many reasons why voice over IP hasn't taken off (customers don't want to be tethered to their PCs, long distance is already cheap -- you'd better not be paying more than $0.05/minute for interstate calls), and to my knowledge Xbox Live doesn't have the billing capabilities required for voice services. The article states that Microsoft would move the chat capability to the Xbox Live dashboard, which implies the requirement of an Xbox Live subscription. It's unlikely that this feature would convince consumers to subscribe to Xbox Live. Microsoft would also need VOIP-PSTN gateways, so their customers can call people who don't use an Xbox. Telephone service is complicated. Maybe Microsoft would partner with a company such as Vonage, but they certainly aren't the easiest to work with.

Music
A neat capability, much like the QCast Tuner for the PlayStation 2. Consumers have shown little willingness to pay for this, however, as they're accustomed to free players. Service like Rhapsody and pressplay would undoubtedly benefit from freedom from the shackles of the PC, but their revenue shares are micenuts compared with Microsoft's costs. Given the current crop of LAN-to-stereo bridges, like the AudioTron and the SimpleFi, the Xbox does stand out, but this advantage may be gone in a few months when the likes of Linksys launch its low-cost device.

Movies
One of the reasons for Movielink's slow start is the simple fact that most consumers prefer to watch movies on their TVs, not their PCs. This problem is defeated with the Xbox in the mix, as it enables high-quality video output to the TV. Perhaps Microsoft plans to download the top 3-4 pay per view movies to the Xbox hard drive each night (Movielink movies are 500-600MB each, so they would easily fit on the 8-9GB Xbox HDD), so when the consumer chooses a popular movie playback begins immediately. The margins on this business are low, too. And Microsoft will compete with existing TV-based PPV and Video on Demand, which is slowly rolling out to cable systems. This makes a tough market even tougher.

Summary
Low margin + low penetration services will not lift the Xbox to profitability. Great games will. Strong Xbox Live games will give customers a reason to pay $9.95 a month for the service. Hopefully the EA/AOL exclusivity deal will end soon, so Xbox can benefit from good sports titles. Until the games improve, Microsoft is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. They have the cash to be patient, however.

Disclaimer: I work fo

Someone else that we know has been getting behind the action of it all. Microsoft has been distributing content with their own DRM through ALTnet on Kazaa.

PressPlay is already on the same path using Microsoft DRM.

Do you think that with PressPlay, MusicNet et al. the digital music business is at the point where it should be? Is it heading in the right direction? Is that what you planned to eventually achieve with MP3.com?

While I realize you were probably joking when you made this post, I firmly believe that even people on AOL know what an MP3 is, and how to get them. This new offering isn't anything new... it's AOL/TW's version of PressPlay.

With that aside...

When AOL offers a service that lets me not only burn their complete library, coupled with unrestricted use of said songs for portables such as iPods... then... and only then... will they have a money-maker.

I bet there are thousands, if not millions, who would pay a monthly fee for that... especially if they knew they could have the song they're looking for, complete with a clean ID3 tag, all with a single click. They woudn't have to download five versions of the same song on Kazaa or Gnutella just to find one that isn't corrupted (on purpose... by you-know-who) or borked (due to user-error at the time of the rip).

I suppose the big record labels understand this, yet don't care. They're going to take this piecemeal approach to online music, giving an inch here and there... instead of going for what we all want, now.

God Bless American greed.

That said, I wonder how much variety they have managed to represent in 2000 songs. I'd be interested in at least seeing what they are.

However, there is really nothing technologically preventing record labels from ... providing digital music at a fraction of the current price of singles and CDs.

They have to pay the songwriters a royalty per download, no matter what. The going rate is about 8 cents per track, and it's going up in parallel with the Consumer Price Index. At the commonly quoted 25c/download figure (EUR or USD), what does this leave for the performers, the web developers, and the hosting provider?

a.) providing customized CDs for their target audience (in the same vein as the NOW compilation albums)

This is the only way the RIAA can win back its customers. Pressplay's expansion into unlocked "Portable Downloads" is a step in the right direction. For the price of a single CD at a record store, you can download 20 MP3 files in a month and burn a legit music CD-R with no filler. (Filler is the most commonly quoted reason why $18 for a CD is considered too high.)

They're offering different levels of service depending on how much you pay (makes sense), but it looks like a step in the logical direction.
Company Website

Whoever wrote that article has obviously never bothered to even read the PressPlay FAQ when they say that you lose all your downloaded music after 30 days. Look here if you doubt this.

My experience with the service makes me think it is a step in the right direction. I would definitely prefer more than 10 "burnable" tracks per month, and it sucks not having access to the label's entire music libraries. However, it costs less than 1 album purchase/month. Plus I at least know I'm getting a reasonably high-fidelity .wma file from a nice, fat pipe that has no trouble reaching the 1.5Mbps cap on my DSL line.

Comments like the one in the article just further the perception that people who listen to MP3s are just a bunch of jerks who want to steal music.

Your post is what we in the industry call clueless.

Now, you say that's dirty pool because people used to think sixteen bucks a CD was a fair price, so they should continue to feel that way. But you've missed the ground shifting underneath your feet. New technologies have devalued your product in the eyes of the public. You need to either reprice it or accept that there's gonna be a certain amount of loss. You can throw out tepid, restrictive alternatives all you want, but why should people buy it? What's your value proposition for the consumer? (That's what businesses are supposed to do, you know -- serve consumers.)

Is grey-market music illegal? Sure. But grey-market bread would be too. Laws that attempt to impose morality on human nature are doomed to failure. Better to figure out how to profit off human nature by providing something useful at a price your audience thinks is fair than to try to ram outdated products and outmoded laws down our throats.

-- Jason Lefkowitz

To this end, two major groups have been formed. MusicNet and pressplay. MusicNet has support from RealNetworks, AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann AG, EMI Group plc, and Zomba. Pressplay is supported by Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group.

MusicNet says: Our record label partners, BMG, EMI, Warner, and Zomba provide the music that the platform delivers, and RealNetworks, America Online, and Napster will distribute the platform to their subscribers nationwide. MusicNet plans to expand its offerings and is in ongoing discussions with both major and independent labels.

While pressplay claims: The service, which will be available in the U.S. by late summer through a broad array of affiliates, announced its first affiliate relationship in April of this year, joining together with Yahoo! Inc. to form an alliance through which the pressplay service will be marketed to users of Yahoo! network and Yahoo! Music. pressplay is a stand-alone joint venture equally held by Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group.

It's clear that the "future of digital music", will most likely start with the subscription services offered by these two groups. Of course it may take some time for them to refine their business model into something people are eager to pay money for. None the less, the potential is staggering. In the future people are apt to get exactly what they want for a price that's reasonable.

With digital music you can be a lot more flexible in your product offerings. You can sell things on a track level, and you can group these tracks in any way you want. It's not clear what the pricing model for this would be, but what if you only had to pay $0.5 for a digital track. You could get the latest music you actually listen to, instead of getting the latest CD and skipping the tracks that suck. What if you could play a 30 second sound sample of every track in the Sony catalog? This could be huge for music discovery (possibly even more so than radio). What if you belonged to a record club and every piece of music you bought from them was available in digital form for $5/mo. How much would you pay for a subscription to the Pop Top 40?

These are all possibilites for the future, and IMHO show tremendous potential. It's up to them to provide these services at a reasonable price. The problem with Internet radio is that they haven't been able to figure out an attractive pricing model (for users, or advertisers). So while Internet radio may have problems, the future of digital music is very bright indeed.