The Digital Beat, Pressplay . . . still unimpressive

DAVID KUSHNER, rollingstone.com, August 19, 2002

Imagine this: you walk into a record store to buy the new Elvis Costello CD. When you're about to slap down your cash, the clerk says he has to inform you of a few important restrictions. You are not allowed to listen to the CD in your car. You can't listen to it on the beach. You can't listen to it on your Walkman. In fact, you can only listen to it while sitting at your desk, in your office. You laugh because he's got to be kidding. He snatches the CD from your meaty paw as two seven-foot bouncers hurl you through the revolving doors.
Sound insane? Of course it does. You should be able to listen to the sardonic crooner wherever you damn well please. Yet this exact scenario (minus the bouncers) is currently in practice by the major record labels on their short-sighted -- and doomed -- digital music subscription services, MusicNet and Pressplay. Now, Sony and Universal -- the companies behind Pressplay -- are owning up to their own stupidity by unveiling Pressplay 2.0, an updated version based on, according to the statements of their execs, "what our members want." And what do members want? Total freedom and flexibility to play what they want where they want whenever they want. But Pressplay ain't delivering the goods.

The new plan is ostensibly a bigger and bolder version of the first: offering unlimited streams of over 100,000 songs by major recording artists like U2, Sheryl Crow, and Bob Dylan, and expanded options for CD burning and portable players. In reality, it's still restrictive: paying $18 bucks a month only permits consumers ten songs that can be transferred to a portable player (like an iPod or Rio) or burned to a disk.

Now, if you think about it, that's not a terrible offer: it's like buying one CD and having unlimited access to droves of others over the Internet. And with Internet radio stations coming under the gun recently, it's a deal that's even more enticing. But, this late in the digital music game, the labels won't profit on good deals alone. To add insult to injury, Pressplay still touts a kind of Mission Impossible technology that makes the music files self-destruct after a consumer cancels a subscription. There's a good reason that Pressplay and MusicNet are brimming with subscribers: consumers don't want any restrictions at all. Period. Exclamation point. Expletive. Middle finger.

So why not truly give the people what they want? The content industries -- not just music, but film and games, too -- are never going to win this early battle against peer networks like Kazaa and Morpheus. That war is over. However, the industry can profit in the future by capitalizing on what their marketers call "added value" products -- copy-protected DVDs packed with songs, games, videos, the works. Like it or not, labels are going to have to restructure and redefine their role in the digital age. They don't own the music anymore. That power is with the people.

Thanks to John Foyle