Broadband-music week continued today as Yahoo! Inc., Sony Music
Entertainment and Universal Music Group announced plans for Duet, an online
music service.
'Online music is a major legitimate business,' said Jean-Mark Messier,
chairman and CEO of Vivendi Universal. 'This is the first true example of
digital convergence,' said Howard Stringer, chairman and CEO of Sony Corp. of
America. The two labels have 47 percent of the U.S. music market, Messier
said.
Messier said pricing and depth of library information that will be available
on Yahoo! won't be released until the service is launched this summer. Duet
executives said there would likely be various service tiers for streaming and
downloading based on a subscription model.
On April 2, the other three major major labels -- EMI
Group, Bertelsmann AG and Warner Music Group -- formed a joint venture with
RealNetworks Inc., MusicNet, to sell music over the Internet. An on April 4, all
five labels joined with RioPort.com Inc.
and MTVi
to sell music downloads through MTV Networks Web sites.
