Universal Music Group, Sony Embrace Downloadable Singles

After spending nearly two years planning online subscription services, at least two major labels appear to have altered course. The once-taboo concept of selling individual downloads that can be burned to CDs is now being embraced by Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music Entertainment (SME).

UMG will soon allow fans to purchase individual songs via Liquid Audio for 99 cents (Bulletin, April 10); SME is offering tracks through RioPort for $1.49, a 25% drop from the price previously offered through Sony sites.

Both services allow for CD burning, and both promise to offer a significant percentage of new music. "The rules [have] changed," says a Sony spokesperson, who expects the amount of songs available as downloads to "increase dramatically and rapidly."

And it's about time, say new-media execs. "Selling a download without burning capabilities is like selling a car without tires," says RioPort CEO Jim Long. "People will walk into the display room and look at it, but they won't buy it."

The new downloads mark a shift from subscription plans like Pressplay, owned by UMG and SME.

According to digital entertainment tracking firm Redshift Research, such services offer less than 10% of the top 100 singles, and are often encoded with DRM that prevents burning or causes files to "expire." (Bulletin, April 23). "For more than a year, subscriptions were going to be 'the path,' " says Dick Wingate, Liquid Audio senior VP of content and label relations. "The labels wrote off à la carte downloads without ever giving them a prayer, and now it's changing."

Downloads may also replace the dying singles market, which last year suffered a 41% sales drop. Rather than pressing and promoting commercial singles, labels will now give consumers the ability to choose which songs they want to hear. "Labels are not being quite so dogmatic about the control users have over content," says Redshift's Greg Rohd. "This is a step in the right direction."

Still, not everyone is convinced about the viability of download singles. "There's not going to be enough kids willing to drop $1.50 for a single," says Bob Patterson, director of new media at the Firm, "and printing artwork on an ink-jet printer is not the same experience."

RioPort's Long concludes that the growth of legal downloads will take time but is inevitable. "It's pretty much the same thing as when CDs first came out," he says. "It took time to get people to switch from vinyl and cassettes, but once they did, people actually ended up buying more music."