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Listen.com signs a deal with fifth major record label

2 July 2002 2:15 by Petteri "dRD" Pyyny | 1 comment

Listen.com yesterday became the only online music subscription service to have secured rights to all "big five" record labels' music catalogs. Company announced that it signed a deal with Vivendi's Universal Music Group to use UMG's music in its subscription service Rhapsody.

Listen.com now has the most complete music selection when compared to its major record label -backed competitors, Pressplay and MusicNet, but it still lacks music from specific artists, such as Beatles. Reason for this is the fact that some of the biggest names in the business own their rights to their music, unlike most of the current stars, who have signed contracts that make their music a property of the record label.

Biggest problem is not the selection of the music, though -- biggest problem is to get consumers to pay for something that they've used to get free from various P2P networks. And that is a problem that all subscription services have to figure out before they can seriously expect people to sign up to their services. Other issue is obviously the flexibility -- if subscription services can't provide the same flexibility as "free" MP3s can (CD burning, playback with portable MP3 players, etc), they're not going to go anywhere with their business plans.

Permalink to this article

Real buys Listen.com (22 April 2003)

Sony invests in MusicNet (2 March 2003)

Rhapsody to allow users burn BMG tracks to CD (4 November 2002)

Rhapsody allows CD burning (24 October 2002)

Listen.com signs yet another broadband ISP deal (5 September 2002)

Terra Lycos launches co-branded Rhapsody (11 June 2002)

FullAudio launches subscription service (17 April 2002)

Rhapsody to allow CD burning (16 April 2002)

Down Beat to distribute Rhapsody (21 March 2002)

Listen.com signs a deal with AOL TimeWarner (25 February 2002)

Listen.com signs licensing deals with BMG, EMI and Sony (14 January 2002)

Listen.com launched its subscription service (4 December 2001)

Listen.com licenses music from 19 indie labels (29 October 2001)

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Discuss this article!
A_Klingon (Moderator) 3 July 2002 7:07
Re: Listen.Com & Rhapsody I printed out their FAQ and went over it in detail. You get to burn (keep) a maximum of 10 tracks per month. (Big deal - that barely makes a single album). No way would I join his thing. NO WAY. Too proprietary, too buggy, too convoluted. I think that most people, especially if they are going to give out their credit card number, would prefer to have a downloadable music service, not an online streaming service. I really don't want to have to go online in order to listen to the music I like - in many ways that defeats the whole purpose. -- K.A. -- [ + quote]