As far as the music industry is concerned, online music subscription services are the shape of things to come. The five major record companies threw their hats into the ring this month by announcing two such services. AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann AG and EMI Group have joined forces with RealNetworks to create MusicNet. Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group are in cahoots with Yahoo to offer a similar service, under the working name Duet. Both ventures are expected to launch in late summer.
Details are hard to come by.
Don't think of this emerging technology in terms of magazine subscriptions. Rather, the online music subscription packages that are in the works are comparable to cable television. The consumer will not be disappointed.'' Here's how a subscription service could work, in the case of MusicNet. Let's say you're a Christina Aguilera fan. A MusicNet search engine will let you hunt for music by artist, genre or other defined fields.