MusicNet Bought Out; Will Try, Try Again
from the music-to-someone's-ears dept
Back in the late 90s, as the recording industry noticed (way too late) that the world was passing them by with file sharing, some politicians began to realize that the industry wasn’t doing anything other than whining about how the market had changed on them. After some quiet threats from these politicians, the industry realized it had to at least go through the motions of offering music downloads, and so they created and funded two online music services that were both clearly designed to fail miserably, MusicNot and PressPause… er… MusicNet and PressPlay. Since they were terribly designed with high prices and poor selection (the perfect combo!), users pretty much ignored them. PressPlay was eventually sold off to what’s now Napster and MusicNet has chugged along supported almost entirely by AOL, who has rebranded much of the service as their own. Now, however, the company has been sold to some private investors who claim they’re going to revitalize the service. Considering the number of weak, expensive, difficult to use, incompatible music download stores out there, it seems unlikely that a company like MusicNet will break the mold any time soon.
