Wednesday, September 04, 2002
Just Press Play
The music industry appears to be listening to the consumers. PressPlay, an online music subscription service launched earlier this year, has just launched Version 2.0. The first PressPlay had quite a few problems that made it unattractive to consumers. It limited the number of downloads and streams you can perform, the number of songs you could burn to a cd per month, the number of songs you could download from a certain artist for month, and when you cancelled the subscription, you lost access to all the downloads you had made to that point.
Although not perfect, Pressplay 2.0 is a much more consumer friendly platform. The tier-system has been replaced with a basic subscription service that allows you to make unlimited downloads and streams (if you have a computer at the heart of a home entertainment system, this would be agreat way to create a home jukebox). For an additional fee per month, you can make 10 'portable downloads', which are independent of the PressPlay program. Permanent Downloads can be burned to cds, transferred to portable devices, and, most importantly, remain on your system if the PressPlay subscription is cancelled. Artist restrictions have been lifted, meaning you have the ability to download an entire cd from an artist. If you need more portable downloads, they can be purchased in blocks at approximately $.85 a download. The basic service plus 10 downloads runs $17.95 a month.
Perfect? Not yet. The unlimited downloads must still be run through the Pressplay interface, which means your current cd tracks on the computer must be played in a seperate player. And I think the Portable Downloads must be kept in WMA format. Nevertheless, it's a lot closer to the free, truly portable music downloads that web consumers were demanding. What would be truly spectacular is seperating the services: an unlimited streaming/download service, a Portable Download-only service, and a combined plan.
Funny how these changes were never really advertised in any way. Come to think of it, the whole industry hasn't really mentioned or promoted PressPlay or MusicNet in any way, shape, or form. How do they expect these to become viable alternatives to P2P file-swapping if they do not advertise them? It's seems the labels are using these sites just to show they are committed to providing music on line without really doing so.
I tried to explain the new pricing system to some members of Generation Y I saw today, and how it is a significant shift in the industry's stance towards how to sell music. They rejected the theory, and said it won't make a dent in P2P usage at all. Time will tell.
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