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AOL Enters Music Service Fray

Posted by michael on from the buy-the-cow-or-get-free-milk dept.

Masem writes "Several sites, including The Washington Post and News.com report that AOL is planning to enter the online music service market with its own MusicNet offering. The service rates vary from $4 to $18/month, the latter giving you unlimited downloads and streaming content and 10 burnable tracks a month to CD. Future plans will include a pay-as-you-burn cost as well, expected later this year. However, the service is strictly limited to AOL customers, making many wonder if it will grab enough attention of the current subscriber base to actually be of value."

9 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. Selection? AOL/TW signed artists, who else! by flokemon · · Score: 3, Informative

    Can we really expect any music from bands/singers that are not signed to a record company belonging to AOL/TW?

    As opposed to Rhapsody (which I haven't tried), emusic has a great selection and uses the MP3 format, but 128kbps is not good enough for me.

  2. Emusic by bluegreenone · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'll take this opportunity to again sing the praises of emusic.com, which sounds like exactly what you want. Unlimited MP3 downloads for $10 or $15 a month. Their selection is mostly limited to non-major label stuff, but if you can do without Britney there are tons of good tunes to be had. Their jazz section especially is very good.

    1. Re:Emusic by ALpaca2500 · · Score: 3, Informative

      emusic kicks so much ass. the reason i started my subscription was because the had a deal with they might be giants to get a bunch of exclusive content, as well as all their albums (that weren't on the electra label, anyway). i signed up for the 12 month thing, at $10/month, which is pretty damn cheap for unlimited downloads. even if i download 1 good album a month, it's still cheaper than buying CDs. i've spent hours looking through all their artists. occasionally i'll find one i've heard of (Reggie and the Full Effect, Alkaline Trio, Dirtbike Annie, all stuff i'd been slightly interested in but wasnt gonna shell out $15 for a CD), and they give you recommendations based on the stuff you download, and sometimes those turn up somthing good. plus they have tons of jazz, blues, classical. and they're always adding new stuff. i check all the new albums once a week or so, and i usually find something good. emusic isnt a replacement for buying CDs (or however you get your music) because the only have a limited catalog. if the major record labels had something like this, i.e. unlimited (or even limited, like 5 albums per month) in plain old MP3 (maybe you'd like ogg or something) i'd gladly pay $10, or $15, or maybe even $20 per month, and i'm sure tons of other people would too. i guess that's all i have to say for now.

  3. A REAL music service by heidkamp · · Score: 5, Informative
    I've signed up for an subscription service, emusic, that does it right.

    Its cheaper than this AOL crap, and allows unlimited downloads and unrestricted use of the music.

    The downside is that it doesn't have Top 40 type stuff, and all files are 128kB/s, but they got tons of good music if you're willing to dig a little. (It helps if you're into jazz and/or punk).

    I just wanted to bring them up as an example of a site doing it right, and worth checking out. I signed up not on principle, but because they had a bunch of albums I wanted.

  4. Re:ACTUALLY... by Breakfast+Pants · · Score: 3, Informative

    Too bad that it won't be an mp3. No where are mp3s mentioned. Now thats not saying that you cannot still get a digital copy of it--it has to be decoded to be sent to the sound card at some point--but it does mean it won't be as easy as:

    1.download from AOL.
    2. Burn to CD with nero.

    --

    --

    WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
  5. allofmp3 by geniusj · · Score: 3, Informative

    well.. I doubt this would be legal if it were in the US.. But if the RIAA could come up with a site like this, I'd be there. Just like I'm at this site :).. Check out http://www.allofmp3.com/ .. $0.01/mb for MP3s. Many tracks are "online encode" as well, which means you can encode them to whatever bitrate and format you want, including WMA, MP3 and OGG (yes, OGG).. Be sure to click the 'English' link at the top if your russian isn't that great ;)

  6. Music Match MX is the best I tried by sumengen · · Score: 4, Informative

    Music Match MX is the best. They found the correct way of providing this service. Both sound quality and pricewise. For me the sound quality is much more important though. Other than MX, I did like emusic.com but their 128 kbit Mp3's were awful for me.. I am still subscriber for them too.

    Music Match MX, I think, uses MP3pro instead of Mp3. That probably explains the good quality. If you select CD quality for MX, the sound quality satisfies me. I am usually satisfied with 256kbit Mp3's minimum.

    MX Gold ($3/mon) gives you something like a radio, you select an artist and listen to similar artists. You can skip songs if you want. Great for new music discovery. But MX also has a Artist on Demand feature if you buy the platinum service ($5/month). So you can only listen to songs from one or more groups. You don't get to select the songs, but you can skip to the next song if you want. Usually first songs are the popular ones.

    You can create your radio stations based on artists, era, genre, and select the weighting of these. The system works great for me.

  7. Music subscription economics by bmarklein · · Score: 4, Informative
    It would probably help for people to understand the current state of licensing for music subscription services. I am presenting this without any comment on whether legal subscription services are a good value or are likely to succeed, so don't flame me.

    The current "on-demand" subscription services (the major ones being Pressplay, MusicNet, Listen.com's Rhapsody) all have licenses from all 5 major labels plus a number of indies that allow them to do the following:

    • on-demand streaming (e.g., search for a track and stream it)
    • tethered downloads - DRM'd downloads that can only be played on the PC they were downloaded to
    • burnable/portable downloads
    The licenses from the labels generally require the subscription service to pay a small fee (say, 0.2 cents) for each song streamed or each time a tethered download is played. Each time a portable/burnable download is purchased, the label gets about 50 cents. The music publisher gets an additional fee of roughly 8.5 cents.

    The prices now are all about $9 to $10 per month for unlimited streams and tethered downloads plus about $1 per track for burnable/portable downloads. Rhapsody and MusicNet currently don't offer transfers to portable players, only burns, but of course you can rip to MP3 after burning.

    Currently the selection is variable, with some albums or tracks not available at all, some only available for streaming/tethered downloads but not for burning, etc., but the selection has been steadily improving over time. For example the current no. 1 album by 50 Cent is available on all of the services, and is available for burning. The Norah Jones album that just won 8 Grammys is as well. Some artists like Dave Matthews, Madonna, Metallica and the Beatles own their own digital rights and have not allowed their music to be made available on the subscription services yet.

    Another issue affecting availablility is publishing rights - the subscription services need to make deals with publishers representing songwriters in addition to the artist or label who controls the master (recording) rights. In many cases this is why only certain tracks on an album may be available.

  8. Article Incomplete - Cost not $18 by Pinky3 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The article at the Washington Post is not as complete as the one at the New York Times. In particular, AOL is trying to sell a value-added service to consumers who already have broadband service.
    "In the next few weeks, AOL is going to introduce an improved $15-a-month service, with a bundle of content and services meant for people who already buy broadband connections from their cable or telephone companies. That offering will include a limited version of MusicNet that will let users download 20 songs a month and listen to another 20 one time."

    For those who don't want the regular AOL, "for $8.95 a month, users will be able to listen to a catalog of music, now at 250,000 songs and growing, on their computers... The standard $8.95 version of the service will allow users to listen to an unlimited number of songs on demand ...They can also download the songs to their computers for higher sound quality and the ability to listen to them when not on the Internet." What you will not be able to do for $8.95 is burn CD's from the downloaded songs. "A subscriber can listen to MusicNet's downloads on no more than two computers. They also cannot be copied to other devices or sent to other people."

    The premium service is $17.95 and allows the burning of 10 songs a month in addition to unlimited listening.