Personalization puts MUSICMATCH ahead of alternative streaming music services: Bell

Personalization will be key to the success of a new music streaming service offered by Bell Canada, setting it apart from a raft of existing music services already on the market and some offered for free. On September 25, Bell Canada launched a nationwide streaming service from U.S. company MUSICMATCH Inc., available to users for $7.95 per month, or $59.95 annually. The service offers more than 100,000 songs in 35 music genres, including an all-Canadian channel prepared specially for Bell for offer in this country and around the world. Among other features, Bell is touting a personalization engine that allows users to program their own stations around favourite artists. The streams are available only using a proprietary player, the MUSICMATCH Jukebox. For the moment, says Shawn Omstead, director of Bell Canada’s next-generation services, the service won’t work on Macintosh computers and, further, "we’re not going into that market right now." Omstead recognizes that listeners currently have several options to receive the music they want, including peer-to-peer applications such as Limewire and even digital audio music services such as the CBC’s Galaxie service offered by digital television providers and some ISPs. He notes, though, that MUSICMATCH has signed up more than 180,000 people in the U.S. for the service since launching in May 2001, and that it has proven successful. "Your ExpressVu or other pre-done genre services out there are multi-cast, which means you’re just tuning into the same stream that everyone else is listening to. To create a station on MUSICMATCH by keying in your favourite artist – and you can do that from one to 25 artists in that list – …it’s creating a uni-cast station just for you, and you only." He is urging people to try the free seven-day trial, paying special attention to the database back-end that can make intelligent choices about which music listeners might enjoy. "It’s a company that’s been built on the heritage of its jukebox, and they’ve used that technology to make this radio experience that’s scarily accurate to the bands that they know you want to listen to," Omstead says. Terms of the deal between Bell and its partner haven’t been disclosed, but Omstead notes that licensing considerations for the catalog of the Canadian big five record labels are being handled by MUSICMATCH – a key to choosing it as a partner. "All the licensing and publishing issues have been dealt with directly by MUSICMATCH. We chose (them) as a partner because we believe that they had the relationships to strike deals with the five major labels." Omstead shares the general industry belief that music over the Internet will eventually prove a revenue generator and notes that the new service should improve the attractiveness of high-speed Internet services such as Bell’s Sympatico service. He stops short, however, of saying that it might push some consumers to premium, higher-bit-cap services. "Even though it’s CD quality – and we’ve done the analysis to see how many bits are going to be burned as you stream – it’s a 64k bit rate. Over the course of eight hours you’ll burn through about 280 megs. So it means, really, you’re going to have to listen to 22 days of consecutive listening sessions to get to your bandwidth threshold. A lot of listening time is done at work. You’re not necessarily using your home DSL service. "We’ve never positioned it as a way to exceed that bandwidth threshold. It does offer, certainly, one way to get customers to move up to a higher bit rate service, but that wasn’t, certainly, a strategy. It is around trying to make the one meg service more sticky, for sure." Bell is just one of many companies creating new music subscription services, though many, such as Moontaxi (CNM, Feb. 22/02), have yet to begin charging for tunes. "We’ve been working on the project now for many months and we think music is one of the best growth areas for revenue as the model for getting bits to your home moves from CD to high-speed. We think that being there early enough and being the leader will help the music industry monetize what people have been swapping for free. We think that by being there early enough, and making a value-added product to just the music itself…and by delivering our customers a very good experience – we think there is some revenue potential there."

Personalization puts MUSICMATCH ahead of alternative streaming music services: Bell

Broadcast | October 3, 2002

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