In the battle between two pending online music subscription firms to sign up
major partners, Microsoft Corp. Thursday sided with Sony Music Entertainment’s and
Universal Music Group’s pressplay to erect a co-branded site. The deal, in a
way, again pits RealNetworks’ RealPlayer versus Windows Media.
Specific terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but MSN Music will serve
as an affiliate of pressplay’s online music subscription service, which is
due this summer. The shared site will provide the approximately five million
MSN Music users with a large catalog of music from artists in a number of
genres.
The alliance is a further boon for pressplay because it will benefit from
offering the thousands of songs in the popular Windows Media format and
Windows Media digital rights management (DRM) technology for content
protection. MSN Music roared out of the gate in April and has since added new features to tempt music fans.
On the flipside, MSN hopes its subscribers will become enamored of
pressplay, which has its own huge music catalog courtesy of Sony and Vivendi,
and is formatted to allow listeners to
search for the music they want to listen to on demand and to share
personalized playlists.
“This agreement is a natural extension of the popular services we offer
consumers today on MSN Music,” said Yusuf Mehdi, vice president of MSN.
It is also a natural extension of Microsoft’s digital media rivalry with
RealNetworks Inc., which along with AOL Time Warner,
Bertelsmann AG and EMI Group, has teamed to forge
MusicNet, a service similar to pressplay, also due later this
summer.
Microsoft, pressplay Hash Out Co-branded Music Site
