Online and legal music coming to Canada

By DAVID ROSEN

Next month, two online music services will open their digital doors in Canada, allowing customers to listen, download and even burn music tracks for a fee. Unlike some of the existing organizations, which play fast and loose with copyright agreements and music licensing laws, PressPlay and Moontaxi will give Canadians legal (but strictly controlled) access to digital music.

Los Angeles-based PressPlay, owned by music giants Sony Corporation and Vivendi Universal, offers subscribers access to a broad catalogue of music through streaming and downloading -and allows "portability" through CD-R burning. According to the company, the service will give customers access to a vast online library including music from Sony, Vivendi Universal and EMI Recorded Music.

Several independent labels such as Madacy, Matador, Navarre, OWIE, Razor Et Tie, Roadrunner, Rounder and Sanctuary have also signed on with PressPlay, citing the need to gain access to the same online music market as the major record companies.

In partnership with Canada's SympaticoLycos, PressPlay will offer its subscription service to Canadians who want to listen to an array of rock, pop, jazz, country, hip-hop and REtB songs on demand. Rumoured to cost $9.95 per month (the company had not finalized prices by press time), the Canadian version of PressPlay will let customers access streamed music much like digital cable subscribers currently listen to music channels over their home TV.

But the estimated $9.95 a month will just get you access to streaming music; it won't let you download the actual music file, nor will it allow you to burn tracks with your PC or Mac. To get this increased functionality, you'll have to pay an additional (and, as yet, undisclosed) monthly fee. However, when the PressPlay service was launched in the United States a few months ago, four tiered price plans were announced.

In the U.S., PressPlay's Basic Plan costs US$9.95 per month, and allows 300 streams and 30 downloads. The Silver Plan costs US$14.95 and lets customers stream 500 tracks and download 50. Under the Silver Plan, customers can also burn 10 tracks (of the 50 downloaded) onto a CD-R. The company's Gold Plan costs US$19.95 per month, allows 750 streams, 75 downloads and 15 burns. PressPlay's Platinum Plan costs US$24.95 and lets customers stream 1000 music tracks, download 100 of them and burn 20 tracks onto CD-Rs.

Moontaxi - no counting, no downloads

A Toronto-based startup called Moontaxi thinks it has the answer to PressPlay's complex model of counting tracks. When Moontaxi's service launches next month, Co-CEO Derek van der Plaat says it will charge only $5.99 per month for unlimited access to streamed music in a variety of genres.

Initially launching with classical and jazz music (and adding additional genres at a later date), Moontaxi's streams "will provide three personalized music channels in which individual tracks are randomly presented to listeners," explains van der Plaat. A second component of Moontaxi's service is called Music Locker. Here, music lovers can pick 100 tracks from the company's playlist and then create virtual. CDs in which the specific artist, track and play order are specified. According to van der Plaat, you will be able to change the content of your Music Locker at any time. Thus, if you fancy listening to a (virtual) CD of Beethoven one week and Bach the next, you simply change your Music Locker. However, Moontaxi — a company partially owned by EMI Group — has no immediate plans to offer downloads. "We won't be offering downloads for at least six months," explains van der Plaat. "We have to deal with the current restrictions of the music companies. Six months from now, the entire landscape will have probably changed and so we'll be looking at other services."

Other labels

Of course, Sony, Vivendi Universal and EMI Group aren't the only musical games in town. The other two major labels — AOL Time Warner and Bertelsmann AG — are also involved in online music distribution. The problem for Canadian music lovers is that MusicNet, a company owned and controlled by these two labels (and EMI Group) has no immediate plans to move north of the border.

Will paid, legal online music distribution ever take off, especially since many music lovers have already downloaded millions of illegal songs? It will, if you believe a recent survey from Jupiter Media Metrix. Citing a huge market for legal downloadable music, the market research company projected US$1.6 billion in worldwide online music sales this year, and a whopping US$6.2 billion by 2006.

Naturally, only time will tell if this forecast is correct, but many in the industry are cautiously optimistic. •

Clive Hobson, spokesman for Sympatico-Lycos explained, "it's a huge market ... but how the Canadian market will shape up, remains to be seen." •