Following the leads of Seagram Co. Ltd.'s Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Group Plc and BMG, the music unit of Bertelsmann AG, Warner Music Group (WMG) Monday announced plans to offer its music via digital distribution, beginning in November, 2000.

At launch, the downloads will include current singles and Internet-only tracks from such artists as Barenaked Ladies, Collective Soul, Mana, Manhattan Transfer, matchbox twenty, Paul Simon and Olga Tanon, expanding shortly thereafter to offer more than 1,000 digitized albums and singles from superstar artists including Tori Amos, Bjork, Phil Collins, Depeche Mode, Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, Madonna, R.E.M. and Neil Young, all of whom must be wondering why their music is so late to be peddled on the Net when virtually every other artist has already been there for some months.

But, better late than never. Now that MP3.com has settled with everybody but Universal, Napster is a heartbeat away from capital punishment, and the likes of Scour and Gnutella are entering the winter of their discontent for lack of investors, this should be glorious summer for e-music finally locked up by the big five.

To secure its piece of the pie, WMG is working with RealNetworks to develop a platform-neutral infrastructure that will make the downloads available to consumers in the U.S. and Canada via online retailers. The digital download infrastructure is designed to support several popular playback formats endorsed by the music industry. RealNetworks will also promote the service to consumers who use its media software.

"As the digital music landscape continues to evolve, we remain dedicated to creating a flexible system focused on our consumers, artists and retailers," said Paul Vidich, WMG executive vice president, strategic planning and business development. "Through our partnership with RealNetworks and the use of PreviewSystems' software, we can offer consumers not only cutting-edge technology but an easy music downloading experience."

"RealNetworks already has deep and successful relationships with tens of millions of music fans," said Rob Glaser, chairman and CEO of RealNetworks. "This partnership with WMG builds on those relationships, and gives us an opportunity to help move the digital music industry forward."

WMG is working with several retail partners to provide a broad selection of major releases at the online destinations where consumers are already accustomed to purchasing music. WalMart.com, the online venture of America's leading music retailer is among the first retailers to support the service and plans to make downloads from WMG available when it launches its music download service in early 2001.

"Our customers are looking for an easy, convenient way to get the music they want," said Greg Penner, Walmart.com vice president, business development. "This agreement will enable us to offer our customers high quality digital music through a simple and intuitive download process."

Amazon.com, the leader in Internet retailing, also supports WMG's plans. "This is an important development in the evolution of digital music distribution," said Jennifer Cast, the vice president of entertainment at Amazon.com. "As the Internet's No. 1 music retailer, Amazon.com is interested, because WMG's effort allows customers to purchase digital downloads while taking advantage of all the other features and services of a retailer's store."

RealNetworks will provide digital distribution services including content preparation, hosting and delivery, digital rights management, billing services and customer support.

Retail integration for the service will be provided by Preview Systems, whose digital music e-commerce infrastructure solution provides music labels, clearinghouses and service providers, distributors and retailers with CODEC, digital rights management (DRM) and music player technologies.

"Preview Systems provides technologies to accelerate the digital music market. We are delighted to be supporting WMG and RealNetworks' efforts to bring premium music to the mass market through brand-name retailers," said Vincent Pluvinage, CEO of Preview Systems.

Why is AOL/Warner, the biggest Internet marriage in history, last into the digital download pool? Maybe its because theyve got other fish to fry, for starters. For instance, Monday's Financial Times reports that Disney and U.S consumer groups are demanding AOL/Time-Warner promise open access on their interactive television systems before their planned merger be allowed to go through. Critics argue that the next growth area of Internet access will be through set-top digital television boxes, and guarantees must be in place to protect open access and unrestricted content provision through them, the FT article claims.

Further, the AOL open marriage with RealNetworks has required more time to integrate and de-bug, after a variety of troubles with the ever-present Real pop-ups cluttering AOLs pages and sometimes interfering with downloads of software from other companies. But hopefully, if the engineers have it all together, this fall Warner Music will finally be in a position to take up the rear.