Petteri Pyyny
2 Jul 2002 2:15
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.