MusicMatch
announced last week a new version of its jukebox software along
with a new service called MusicMatch On Demand. This service, designed to
compete with Roxio's Napster and RealNetworks's Rhapsody, includes on-demand playback of
all of the 650,000 tracks in MusicMatch's library as well as 99-cent downloads,
internet radio, and other features.
But the most intriguing feature of
the new service is its "Send Tracks" feature, which allows subscribers (at as
low as US $8 per month, which is less than its competitors) to send emails to
non-subscribers containing playlists, which recipients can play up to three
times before having to purchase them or subscribe to the service. It is
possible to send many such playlists to the same non-subscriber, although only
the first 20 tracks on each playlist can be played in their entireties for free.
Although it undoubtedly took more effort for MusicMatch to create an
on-demand streaming service than to enable this share-with-a friend feature, the
latter has far more significant implications for the copyright-respecting online
music industry. It is both ironic and a testament to the configurability
of DRM systems like Microsoft Windows Media DRM, which MusicMatch uses (as does
Napster), to meet market demand. In the end, the question of enabling features like this ends up being a matter for the service provider's license
agreement with the record companies more than that of technical
implementation.
Of course, other online music services should shortly follow suit and offer
similar sharing features -- such as Napster, which currently has a "shared
playlist" feature that only offers 30-second samples for free. With the
major recording companies now willing to license these online services to
provide such sharing, one might well ask what benefit the P2P file sharing
services will ultimately offer users beyond the ability to infringe copyright.
Such services would certainly continue to be beneficial for distributing
works that are not copyrighted, that are rarities untracked by current music
industry players, or that copyright owners choose to distribute in that way.
They will also serve as ballast for inducing record companies, collecting
societies, and other interested parties to streamline processes that lead to
more music being made available over legitimate online services, and for
inducing some of the most important pop music artists of all time (e.g., the
Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Madonna, Metallica) to finally make their material
available as well.
As those factors dwindle, the differentiating function
of P2P file sharing networks should gradually narrow to that of free vs.
non-free, or infringing vs. non-infringing. It would be hard to justify
their continued existence at that point.
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