BMG, Lycos offer music over the web

Record label BMG Entertainment is letting customers pay for and download its music over the web and has struck the first in a series of distribution deals with Lycos Music.

Only 100 songs and albums will be available initially, but by Christmas all 2500 songs in BMG's catalogue will be on sale.

Artists available in the first batch include Santana, Christina Aguilera and Whitney Houston. Singles will cost between $1.98 and $3.49, CD albums will cost between $9.98 and $14.98, and double CDs between $11.98 and $20.98.

The tie-up is a major coup for Lycos, which faced competition from rivals Yahoo and AOL. Lycos last month signed a similar deal with another music business powerhouse, Universal Music Group.

Record companies have been forced to speed up their plans for digital downloads in the face of file-swapping facilities from Napster and other websites.

However, Aram Sinnreich, an analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix, said: "It's commendable that BMG wants to at least distribute throughout a number of partner sites, but I'd say it's too little, too late in this case."

See also:

MP3: making sweet music on the net

The music industry has been shaken up by the emergence of MP3-based music websites such as Napster. Critics accuse them of facilitating piracy while advocates say they make it easier for unsigned musicians to have their music heard. We look at what all the fuss is about.  08 Aug 2000

US record companies follow Napster's lead

Universal Music Group, which this week will begin letting customers download and pay for music over the internet, is the latest record company to accept that a new model for music distribution is inevitable.  04 Aug 2000

Record companies risk Napster backlash

Research company Gartner has warned record companies that they will hurt only themselves by pursuing Napster, the music sharing website.  01 Aug 2000

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!