AfterDawn: News

After seeing its restrictive business plan to fail, Pressplay, a joint venture of Sony and Vivendi, has changed its music subscription service dramatically.

Previously users of Pressplay could only stream and download a very limited amount of songs each month for their subscription fees, but now Pressplay will remove almost all of the obstacles. By paying the monthly fee of $14.95 (the big change is that 12months non-refundable subscription is required), users can download and stream an unlimited amount of songs during their membership. Obviously all tracks include DRM scheme, but the change is still big. Users are also allowed to burn upto 120 songs a year to CD-Rs if they want to, making those tracks truly DRM-free.



But Pressplay still faces a major problem from its rival, Listen.com, which is the only subscription service that has rights to all "big five" record labels' music catalogs, while Pressplay has content only from its owners, Sony and Vivendi, and from British EMI.

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 1 Aug 2002 13:12