The Future of downloadable music

it's the big-bucks battle over the future of downloadable music and a winner is emerging. while the majors are still plotting their course of action and going through trial phases, smaller, trend setting music companies are paving a golden path directly to the consumer. their product? subscription services.
the subscription based music service is quite simple. users pay a set fee per month/quarter/year via a secure server and are allowed access to the music company's library of downloadable music. the partner record labels are paid a percentage of the user fees, music publishers are paid a small fee per download and the balance goes to the music company providing the service.
a notable pioneer in the subscription service model is spinrecords.com who sell unlimited downloads per month (mp3 format) for $4.95. with a catalog comprised mainly of relatively unknown artists / labels, spinrecords.com still has to compete with established powerhouses like mp3.com and besonic.com, music companies who allow unlimited downloads for free. another, more prominent, pioneer is emusic.com who are currently selling their subscription service for $19.99 per month (quarterly and yearly packages are also available). with 125,000 titles in their catalog, including established artists like download, dj spooky and haujobb, emusic might become the first profitable success in the virtual music world. at the very least, they will be laying the groundwork and others will follow. partnering with numerous mid-size record labels has allowed emusic to build a fairly comprehensive catalog encompassing a wide variety of genres. i signed up for the monthly subscription at emusic and was able to download as many tracks (or full cds) as i wanted. i felt guilty though, for $19.99, i downloaded a good 20 cds (mp3 format), worth far more than the piddling 20 bucks i paid.
the success of the subscription service will depend on both the marketing and the partner labels. to garner public interest and make subscription services a viable alternative to mp3 piracy, subscription services may very well require the participation of major labels, or, at the very least, mini-major labels with established and popular artists in their roster. at the moment, i'm very satisfied with the subscription service at emusic but i'm not the average music consumer. i'm not interested in downloading music by artists like madonna, britney spears or limp bizkit. with few exceptions, the major names on major labels don't appeal to me but to the average consumer, those big names and those popular songs are very important. partnering with 'established artist' labels will play a vital role in the success of these new subscription services.
the major labels are now, finally, moving ahead with downloadable music for the consumer. emi recently announced that it would be selling over 100 cds from its music catalog in downloadable format (windows media and liquid audio) through well known online retailers. sounds pretty simple.. but it wasn't. finding the retailers who sell emi music wasn't easy. thinking tower records would be up for the job, i jumped over to their site and found countless audio clips, but no downloadable music for sale. amazon.com was next on my list - nada, zilch. hmv.com had a download section but no downloads for sale. i tried cdnow.com's download section and all i found were single song sales in liquid audio format. perhaps, in the interest of trend setting (or sales!), emi and its retail partners could have made the process a whole lot easier by clearly identifying an emi download section, or at least a 'pay for downloads' section. my web search finally proved fruitful at virginjamcast.com, where entire cds are available to purchase in windows media format or liquid audio. sony music entertainment have made things far easier for the consumer. in their digital downloads section, various tracks by a small number of sony artists are offered for sale. the price, $2.49 us per song. pretty steep. universal has now entered the digital download bonanza when they recently announced they would release tracks, on a trial basis, from artists such as blink 182 and luciano pavarotti at major online retailers. perhaps in the future the majors will be offering subscription services too, hopefully consumer demand will dictate that it would be the best course of action.
as for me, i'm sticking with emusic.com, they've got the right idea, and the music i like.




Source:Hindustanis.org