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Pressplay launches

19 December 2001 13:18 by Petteri "dRD" Pyyny

Finally Pressplay kept their promise and launched the service before the end of the year, today -- the launch has been postponed so many time during this fall and winter that some people started wondering if the service will launch at all. But probably they were forced to, because rival service, MusicNet, launched its own service through Real's RealOne earlier this month.

Anyway, Pressplay, a music service owned by Sony and Vivendi Universal, is now available through its distribution partners; MSN, Yahoo and Roxio.

First two weeks the service is running a free trial and users can download 20 songs and stream 200 songs for free. After that the service fees will be based on the number of downloads and number of tracks that user can burn on CD. Songs can not be transferred to portable digital audio players. Service is powered by Vivendi Universal's MP3.com.

While rival MusicNet lets its distribution partners such as Real, Napster and AOL decide their own pricing models, Pressplay has chosen a different tactic and has fixed pricing for its various service levels. Pressplay's prices are:

� Basic: $9.95 for 300 streams and 30 downloads
� Silver: $14.95 for 500 streams, 50 downloads and 10 burns
� Gold: $19.95 for 750 streams, 75 downloads and 15 burns
� Platinum: $24.95 for 1,000 streams, 100 downloads and 20 burns

Launch of the service is also important for Microsoft's MSN and Yahoo, because both services have suffered from declining advertising revenue and have tried to find other ways to increase the revenue stream.

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