Pressplay to run on Macintosh this year

Sue Zeidler

LOS ANGELES: Pressplay, a Web music service owned by Sony Corp. and Vivendi

Universal on Thursday said it hopes to make its online service available to

Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh computers sometime this year.

"We are hoping that sometime this year that Pressplay will be available

(on Macs), although we can't guarantee," said Andy Schuon, chief executive

officer of Pressplay, during a conference call hosted by research firm Jupiter

Media Metrix.

Heads of other subscription services such as Pressplay's big label-backed

rival MusicNet and independently owned FullAudio and Listen.com also joined the

call.

The commercial services are launching in hopes of tapping the huge audience

demonstrated by song-swapping service Napster, which was closed in July 2001 by

an industry-wide copyright lawsuit claiming it was encouraging wholesale piracy.

While Apple has made a big splash this year in the digital music sector with

its iPod MP3 music player, none of the new online music subscription services

are yet available on Mac computers because they are not compatible with the

Macintosh's operating system.

Pressplay, for instance, runs on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.

Schuon and other online music executives are looking ahead to the day their

programs will also run on Macs, which Apple has been trying to position as a

digital hub for music, video and digital photography.

Pressplay also uses Microsoft's digital rights management (DRM) system and is

distributed through Microsoft's MSN, Yahoo Inc. and Roxio Inc. Web sites.

Industry experts said moving towards the Mac, which has a roughly five per cent

share of the personal computer market, was a logical step.

Mac 'consumer-friendly'



"The Apple is so consumer-friendly and it makes all the sense in the
world to have these services on the Mac," said Karen Allen, an Internet

consultant formerly with the Recording Association of America (RIAA). "If

Pressplay is being offered through MSN music, MSN music would also get more

subscribers if they were offered through the Mac so it would increase the

revenue stream."

Microsoft declined comment. A spokesman for Apple was not immediately

available. Online music executives see a challenge ahead in trying to convert

former Napster users, used to getting music for free, to pay for their services,

particularly as free Napster-clones have also sprung up.

In addition, the officials noted their services were challenging many of the

basic assumptions upon which the recording industry has been historically based.

"Since the recording industry's inception, musical sales have also been

based on the sale of physical goods. This means that we're playing with the

business model, so a significant portion of this business will be in

education," said Alan McGlade, president and CEO Of MusicNet, the service

backed by RealNetworks Inc., Bertelsmann AG, EMI Group Plc and AOL Time Warner

Inc..

Many executives on the call also said they believed there was a large

untapped market in an older audience who have more disposable income and may

have missed the Napster phenomenon. The biggest audience for Napster was

comprised of mostly college-aged or mid-20-year-olds who had less cash and more

time on their hands, they said.

"We think the older audience has huge potential. The over-25 demographic

has been undeserved in general. There's not a lack of business in that group,

but there's a lack of alternatives on the radio side and in retail," said

James Glicker, president of FullAudio.

Napster recently launched the test of its own secure subscription service to

compete in the market as well.

(C) Reuters Limited.