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AOL revamps Music Now
Online giant's digital download store relaunches with the addition of music videos, streaming radio, and user community features.
Long a second-tier player in the digital music game, AOL launched a revamped version of its AOL Music Now service today, increasing the size of its music catalog and adding music videos and streaming radio to the mix, along with a series of community features.
AOL Music Now
The move comes amid heightened competition in the digital download space, with Microsoft set to launch its own stand-alone store later this year and startup SpiralFrog announcing today that it landed the catalog of Universal Music Group for its ad-supported service to launch later this year.
"With the addition of music videos and AOL Radio with XM stations, AOL Music Now has raised the bar in the digital music service space," AOL Music Now president Amit Shafrir said in a statement. "AOL Music Now is where great music finds you. It's as simple as pushing play."
The relaunch, which comes 10 months after AOL acquired subscription service MusicNow from Circuit City Stores Inc., intends to put AOL in the thick of the battle among those services vying for a distant second to Apple's iTunes among digital download services. iTunes commands more than 67 percent of the market share in the space, according to NPD Group, with eMusic second at 11 percent, RealNetworks' Rhapsody third at 8 percent, and Napster fourth at 5 percent.
The new AOL Music Now adds 500,000 tracks to its existing catalog, giving it a total of 2.5 million tracks. The service also now includes music videos, a move that outs the service in line with Yahoo Music, which serves up the most legal music videos on the Web.
And as previously reported, AOL has inked a deal to stream several shows from XM Satellite Radio, including Bob Dylan's weekly program, Theme Time Radio Hour. AOL's online radio offering will include more than 200 new radio stations, the company said today.
AOL Music Now charges 99 cents per song and $1.99 per music video, matching the industry standard set by iTunes. AOL Music Now subscriptions cost $4.95 per month for AOL Radio with XM and $9.95 per month for unlimited, on-demand streaming and downloading of songs and videos. AOL Music Now is the first online service to offer videos on a subscription basis, rather than as pay-per-download.
The monthly subscription fee jumps to $14.95 for users who want to be able to transfer music to portable media devices that support Microsoft's "PlaysForSure" digital rights management (DRM) technology. DRM applies usage restrictions to downloaded music. Because iPods are not "PlaysForSure" compatible, content from AOL Music Now will not play on iPods.
To combat the fact that its content will not work with the dominant portable media device on the market--NPD data gives the iPod 76 percent of the market--AOL Music Now has partnered with Creative Labs to offer its members $50 off the purchase price of the Zen Vision:M 30GB player. Creative recently settled its patent infringement lawsuit against Apple for $100 million.
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