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A test version of AOL Time Warner’s long-awaited MusicNet subscription music service has gone live and is available via AOL’s internet service. MusicNet will be rolled out in full in January. For $9.95 a month, users get 100 tracks, which they can cull from a library of 78,000. The tracks can’t be burned onto CDs. MusicNet is a collaboration between AOL Time Warner’s Warner Music Group, Bertelsmann’s BMG Entertainment, and EMI Group. MusicNet debuts at a busy time for subscription music services. RealNetworks also went live with a test version of its music service, Real One, last week. MusicNet also will be up against Listen.com’s Rhapsody subscription music service, which came out last week, and Pressplay, an undertaking of Sony Music and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group. The services are all meant to be a way for record labels to profit from the online distribution of music. The services are programming their song files to expire after about 30 days, meaning that users will be forced to keep paying the monthly fee or lose their downloaded tracks.
About.com eliminates free email and web hosting
About.com, the network of web sites on topics ranging from sexuality to sermons, is about to do away with its free email and web site hosting services. Instead the Primedia-owned company will start charging $29.95 a year for a new service, About WebMail Pro, which launches soon. About.com is scrapping the free email because it can no longer afford to offer it in the face of a recession and a dismal ad climate. According to reports, About.com is also casting off the email service because it regards email as a portal service, and it does not consider itself to be a portal. It is eliminating its About Site Builder service effective Dec. 17. It will refer people instead to ZDNet, which offers a site-building service using the same technology.
Toyota will sell new model via the internet
Following in its own footsteps, Japanese automaker Toyota is looking to sell a new brand of vehicle over the internet. Much like the Prius, the hybrid model that Toyota already sells over the internet, the new car will be aimed at younger consumers. As with the Prius, orders for the car are placed online and the delivery takes place at a Toyota dealership. Toyota says it will offer a separate space at dealerships for the buyers of the cars ordered off the web. The automaker says that the internet sales model so far has proven so successful that it is having a hard time keeping up with demand for the Prius. The company has not specified what type of vehicle the new internet model will be. But Toyota does say that the new model will offer space for passengers and sports equipment, which sounds suspiciously like a small sport-utility vehicle or wagon. Toyota says it will finalize plans for the new internet model within a year.
Fake coupon for Coach items spreads on the web
Ah, the holidays, time for ho-ho-hoaxes: Luxury apparel and accessory maker Coach has disavowed any association with an email coupon offering 25 percent off on all its retail wares. The coupon was ostensibly valid from Dec. 5 through Dec. 16. None of the Coach stores, the company says, will honor the coupon, which had consumers salivating over discounts on pricey leather purses and the like. The company did offer discounts to select customers, but they were an exclusive and controlled group. The coupon was quite similar to another one that’s being passed from inbox to inbox for the Gap. That discount, which offers 30 percent off on all regularly priced merchandise, was the real McCoy. Another luxury retailer, Kate Spade, offered a legitimate email discount as well, 30 percent off select goods from Dec. 7 through Dec. 9. Such coupons mark a desperate grab for customers amid a recession.
Coca-Cola archives entire ad history
Coca-Cola has used countless ad campaigns over the years to keep reminding people to quaff the sugary concoction. All this information will soon lie at the fingertips of its employees, ready for deployment. Coca-Cola has acquired technology from IBM that will allow the soft drink giant to install its entire advertising and brand history in one online digital media archive. Thousands of Coke workers will have access to about 9,000 graphical images, 7,000 text documents and 25,000 corporate videos and television ads. Coca-Cola did not state the price it paid for the project but does say that IBM's Global Services department began working with Coke about a year ago. There’s no word on whether any ad messages from the late 19th century, when cocaine was part of the chemical mix of Coke, will be available for perusal.
December 12, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
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