Online Music

In 2000 Sony became the second company to make music from one of the major labels available for sale on the internet, with 'The Store'. However, it was not the first online music sharing company, because the first one was shut down in a lawsuit under the DMCA. The big record companies were apprehensive to license their catalogs to outside companies and refused the late 90's requests of MP3.com, Cductive and eMusic (then called Goodnoise) to sell digital song downloads. They eventually decided to start their own services, which they could control directly.

Sony's service turned out to be an ill-conceived affair. Not only was the service difficult for consumers to navigate and use, Sony's expensive pricing of US$3.50 per song track turned off many early adopters of the service. Furthermore, as MP3 Newswire pointed out in its review of the service, users were actually only renting the tracks for that $3.50. After a certain point the files expired and could not be played again without repurchase. The service quickly failed.

Undaunted, the record industry tried again. Universal Music Group and Sony teamed up with a service called Duet, later renamed PressPlay. EMI, AOL/Time Warner and BMG teamed up with MusicNet. Again, both services struggled, hampered by high prices and heavy limitations on how downloaded files could be used once paid for. In the end, consumers chose instead to flock to the free file sharing programs, which were far more convenient, not to mention easy, to use.