WHASINGTON (Music
Industry magazine) - The online music industry has exploded in 2002 providing more legitimate service offerings for consumers than ever before. The recent wave of new agreements between record companies and legitimate online music services caps a year of dynamic progress in which the labels delivered hundreds of thousands of music tracks to fans. Consumers now have access to a variety of feature-rich services offering a breadth of music, permanence and portability options.
Music fans can now burn, download and stream music from a variety of subscription services, a la carte download offerings and streaming services made available through dozens of distributors.
Subscription Services Hundreds of thousands of tracks are available through online services, such as Emusic, Full Audio, MusicNet, Pressplay, and Listen.com's Rhapsody, which provide permanent downloading, burning or portability features. These services all have an ever-growing library of songs from all genres including rock, pop, jazz, country, hip-hop and R&B. Subscribers to these services can also enjoy music from thousands of classic and current artists from the world's five major companies -- BMG, EMI Recorded Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, as well as from a host of independent labels.
Digital Downloads Services and web sites that specialize in individualized downloads such as Liquid Audio and RioPort offering hundreds of thousands of tracks each are also part of an exciting and developing legitimate online music marketplace. Music fans can purchase digital tracks from the catalog of major and independent record labels, which are available through online retailers and music web sites. The downloads are burnable to CD and transferable to secure portable devices.
Streaming Subscription Services There are also on-demand streaming subscription services like Streamwaves.com that have licensed content from many of the major record companies. Subscribers can stream tracks on demand, from any Internet-enabled device as well as certain portable devices.
"Within the past year, each of the major music companies has announced a record number of online initiatives, yielding a broad array of offerings from legitimate services. The true winners are the music fans who want to listen to music how they want it, where they want it and when they want it," said Hilary Rosen, Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). "To fans who have said they wanted to enjoy music online, the recording industry is listening and delivering."
"From the start, the overriding goal of our efforts to curb illegal Internet music trafficking has been to foster an online environment where the legitimate services can succeed," Rosen continued. "It is also encouraging that the extraordinary progress of the legitimate online market in the United States is being mirrored around the world."
"This year the music industry has made great strides in providing consumers with a variety of legitimate services," said P.J. McNealy, research director at GartnerG2 in San Jose. "There have been consumers waiting for legitimate, compelling, reasonably priced services, and the music industry, service companies and technology companies have been responding."
A list of many legitimate services can be found at www.musicunited.org.
