UMG’S SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE: A USER’S REPORT

As the major labels enter the subscription-service fray, the atmosphere in the "digital space" is at its most fractious and confused. With Napster, Scour and other free file-swapping services garnering huge user bases but making no money and facing terrible legal punishment, MP3.com paying vast fees to the industry (in the wake of its own courtroom travails) to get its own streaming sub service back on track and numerous "legit" online music services' stock prices falling through the floor, can the big "content" owners get in the game and win? Will users pay a monthly fee to stream music from a single (albeit huge) corporate library? And how will the artists be compensated for their inclusion?

I can't answer a single one of these questions. I can, however, tell you about my day as a beta user of Universal's new streaming subscription service.

First, I registered through Farmclub.com, selected a user name and password, skimmed a Terms of Use agreement of Dickensian length and proceeded to the sub-service interface. The page has a Farmclub player that streams tracks in either Windows Media Audio or RealAudio.

The service allows users to search by artist, track or genre as well as browse for music alphabetically. Whole albums, where they're available, can be streamed. Individual tracks can either be played in isolation or imported into user-generated playlists.

Musical offerings range from the stunningly comprehensive (Steely Dan, a wealth of material from MCA's lovingly remastered Hendrix discs, Cannonball Adderley) to fair (a singles-only collection from Soundgarden, selections from Hole) to paltry (David Bowie's "Laughing Gnome," anyone?), but for a single entity's catalog, it ain't chopped liver. Options to buy CDs are always presented in close proximity to the player.

As a personalized desktop radio station, the service isn't bad. Once a few bugs are removed—multitasking tends to jog the audio occasionally, and some commands can bounce you out of the service entirely—it could well earn some hardcore fans.

Furthermore, UMG's program allows users to stream without having to buy CDs beforehand (unlike My.MP3.com) and—for those with limited disk space—eliminates the hassles of downloading and storing MP3 files of inconsistent quality and completeness.

But in the era of free peer-to-peer sharing and myriad other online options that cost users nothing, will consumers cough up $15 per month to use it? And more importantly, why should they settle for a service limited to what a single label group is willing to license when they can find virtually anything they want from any label group for free with Napster and kindred applications?

These are the big questions. But it's still early, and UMG has demonstrated at the very least that it can provide services that are nominally competitive with the digital outlaws it has been prosecuting. If it can bring in the other label groups and offer a comprehensive streaming alternative to consumers for a reasonable all-in price—or find a way to offer digital listening for free in order to boost product sales—it might even prevail.