99-cent song downloading service debuts

By Alex Veiga
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — An online digital music service debuted yesterday, offering 99-cent song downloads and the fewest restrictions of any Windows-based service on how often customers may copy song files onto CDs and other devices.

The MusicMatch Downloads service, from San Diego-based software maker MusicMatch Inc., benefits from the sort of generous music licensing rights previously only granted by the top five recording companies to Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store.

iTunes works for now only on Apple's Macintosh computers, which make up just 3 percent of the personal computer market.

Like iTunes, MusicMatch lets its customers transfer the songs they buy to up to three PCs. Users also can send the songs to digital music devices capable of playing Windows Media Audio files.

Individual songs may be burned or copied to CDs without restriction, although CDs with the same order of songs can only be burned five times to prevent pirates from churning out scores of full copies. ITunes allows up to 10 CDs to be burned with the same playlist.

"For personal use, it will seem like unlimited burning," said Dennis Mudd, MusicMatch's chairman and CEO.

Also like iTunes, full album downloads will start at $9.99. MusicMatch is initially offering 211,000 songs from major and independent music labels.

MusicMatch Downloads will compete with a slew of other online music services catering to the non-Macintosh PC market, including Buy.com's BuyMusic.com, RealNetworks' Rhapsody, MusicNow, MusicNet and pressplay, which is due to be relaunched this year under the name Napster 2.0.