eMusic, the online music download store that started in 1998, has announced that it has added music from its first major label, bringing in Sony’s ‘classic’ catalog, all music that is 2 years old or older.
The store has offered a subscription based model and DRM-free MP3s since its release, and has tracks from thousands of indie labels.
During its 11 years, the company has attracted over 400,000 paying customers, each paying $12 USD per month.
Sony feels placing its newer, more popular songs into eMusic’s unlimited, DRM-free service, is too risky and has therefore excluded the songs. However, Sony’s classic catalog is still very large and includes hits from top name artists such as Britney Spears, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and Usher.
There is a catch though. “As part of the deal, eMusic says it will slightly raise prices and reduce the number of downloads for some of its monthly plans.”
Result for: indie labels
The decently popular website Play.com has begun offering high quality, DRM-free MP3 music downloads for the relatively low price of 65p in the UK, and the company says it will start with about one million tracks from EMI and indie labels.
The files, which will be 320kbps, should be playable on most if not all media devices on the market, due to its MP3 format. Apple already offers EMI tracks DRM-free as well but in AAC format which is mainly supported by its iPod line. The price is also cheaper and a Play.com spokesperson has said that “we’re going to be cheaper than [Apple's] iTunes. Whatever price iTunes goes down to, we’ll be looking to go lower.”
In a recent decision, the EU has told Apple it must standardize its prices across Europe and so the tracks are expected to drop from its high 79p current price.
Play.com should also see competition from Amazon MP3 which already undercuts Apple’s track prices and offers DRM-free music from all major labels. So far Amazon MP3 is only in the US but it will hit the UK later this year.
The company says it is talking to the other major labels, “and if one or more had been quicker we might have held off the launch. We think that within the year, the others will be on board.”
Result for: indie labels
One month after launching their MySpace Music streaming service, the company has announced a new deal that will double the amount of indie music available through the service.
The deal, with the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA), will add more than 1 million tracks from over 3000 indie labels to MySpace Music.
IODA founder and Chief Executive Kevin Arnold added that the songs will be added to the service in December.
MySpace music currently has several million tracks available to its 120 million users from the Big 4 labels as well as independent music distributor, The Orchard, whose catalog is over 1.3 million tracks.
Frank Hajdu, executive director of MySpace Music, noted that it was looking to add as much content as possible, as efficiently as possible.
“Many, many services that have been launched, they build their content catalogs out over time. If you wait indefinitely, you’ll never launch,” he added.
Hadju also noted that it was still in talks with the largest independent distributor, Merlin, who is in charge of digital distribution for over 15,000 labels.
