AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann, EMI Group, and RealNetworks announced a subscription music service, called MusicNet, which should go online late this summer. Both America Online and RealNetworks announced plans to launch online subscription music services of their own in late summer or fall. Microsoft is also competing in this market with their MSN Music web site. Their streaming audio channels are currently free. The lack of standards in the streaming media industry is a major hurdle.
Content providers have to cater to multiple formats in order to reach the entire market.
For example, most streaming audio sites provide both RealNetwork's Real Audio format and Microsoft's Windows Media Player format. The situation is worse for streaming video since Apple's QuickTime format is also a player, although it has dropped significantly in popularity. The two major players set to battle it out are Microsoft and RealNetworks. Recently a standards group, called the Wireless Multimedia Forum, was formed to work out a standard set of delivery, billing, copyright and management technologies for use in wireless networks. It ties computers back to older technologies such as the telephone, television and radio with which we are already very comfortable.