Sony Music Entertainment and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group launched an upgraded online music subscription service Thursday, in an apparent concession to consumer demand for downloadable music, according to wire service reports.
Pressplay, the record companies’ seven-month-old joint online venture, will begin offering paying subscribers the ability to burn major label songs on blank CDs and to transfer the music to a variety of portable devices.
Pressplay and MusicNet , a similar service from AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann, EMI Group and RealNetworks launched last December. These firms have been criticized for failing to offer users a viable alternative to the free, music swapping networks like Morpheus and Kazaa.
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