AfterDawn: News

MusicNet announced Friday that its distribution platform is ready for a roll-out in coming weeks, targeting to launch the system in early October. Rival Pressplay made similiar announcement a week ago stating that it would launch in mid-September (well, it's mid-Sept at the moment and we're still waiting, although WTC/Pentagon attacks have delayed many other things as well).

Both services are major record label backed online music services that aim to target to Napster freaks, offering legal ways to download and stream music from the web. Both services are based on monthly fees that haven't been announced yet. Problem with both services is the fact that they only offer partial selection of music -- Pressplay offers music from its owners, Vivendi Universal and Sony, while MusicNet offers music catalog from its record label owners BMG, AOL TimeWarner and EMI. RealNetworks owns major stake of MusicNet as well.

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 16 Sep 2001 4:54