If there was any doubt that the Internet industry considers downloadable music as a major item on consumer's wish lists, the announcements in the last couple of weeks of several new services by some major names in the field should put that to rest.

Napster may be on its last legal legs, but record labels, Internet services and others are gearing up to offer the beleaguered file-sharing service's 160 million users legal, legitimate alternatives to the copyright-infringing free servers. It won't be free, and it will probably lack Napster's community feel, but by year's end, you will probably have a number of different outlets to turn to in order to get the latest hits.

The Players

On the heels of last week's Senate hearings on online entertainment came the announcement of a RealNetworks deal that brought several other potential providers out of the testing labs to make their pitch for your future dollars. None of these services is Ready for Prime Time yet, but record labels in particular wanted to assure lawmakers and consumers alike that they were working on ways to make available the music Internet users want at a price the labels and artists can live with.

Napster itself is still struggling to re-invent itself as a subscription-based service with partner Bertelsmann AG, and hopes that the recent Senate hearings will aid in its attempt to keep the free service alive long enough to work out details of how to implement the subscription service. Napster CEO Hank Barry told Senate Judiciary Committee hearings last week that the company would like to see some sort of compulsory licensing system put into place so that the major record labels would be forced to allow services such as Napster to obtain licenses to legally distribute their copyrighted materials. The labels, all busy with their own plans and who view compulsory licensing as "government intervention," not to mention a threat to their livelihood, aren't at all in favor of such an idea.

Napster also has plans to acquire music-recommendation service GigaBeat, in an effort to retail users by giving them a way to find new music that they might enjoy.

RealNetworks, a major player in the streaming media field, announced last week that it would partner with EMI, AOL Time Warner and Bertelsmann to form MusicNet, which will offer a wide range of downloadable music through RealNetworks technology. The service, which will operate as an independent company with minority stakes held by the record labels, won't be a consumer offering per se. Instead, MusicNet will be a "business-to-business" play which will package the music and offer third-party websites and services the licenses for their own subscription services. AOL Time Warner and RealNetworks have announced intent to offer MusicNet services by the end of this summer.

Other major record labels Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment are partnering with Yahoo! for their own version of a service. The two labels will license music to Yahoo!, but thus far no cross-label deals have been reached to offer music to subscribers from other labels. The service is planned to be offered in tiers, with pricing to be announced close to the projected launch at the end of this summer. The new service says that they're aware that consumers don't want to be limited to only a few labels and they're working to evolve a community until licensing agreements can be reached.

Not to be overshadowed, Microsoft revealed its own plans for a music subscription service in the wake of the RealNetworks announcement. The new MSN Music will current operate as a webcaster, offering Internet Radio categorized by genre. The service will eventually include a subscription-based downloadable music component, once details of pricing and licensing becomes available.

The current most viable consumer alternative in the "pay for play" market is Viacom-owned MTV, who through a partnership with Rioport's Pulse One Media Services will begin offering click-and-buy downloads through their streaming MTV and VH1 Internet stations. The services will offer 10,000 tracks from all record labels, with singles downloadable for $1.99 and entire albums for $18.98. Consumers will be able to move the downloads between devices such as PCs and portable MP3 players, but probably won't be able to burn CDs from the tracks, depending on the label's policies.

Analysts say that the price point seems high for a restricted download, but labels wanted a retail price structure maintained as a bargaining point in agreeing to license the tracks to Viacom. Brick and mortar retailers have been complaining loudly that the major labels are betraying their long-held agreements and that they are being squeezed out in the rush to open up the download market.

The Problems

Most industry-watchers agree that the recent announcement serve only as a "place-holder," or "wait and see what we're going to do," in order to keep consumer interest high for later development. The lack of a consistent method for licensing material from all labels, the lack of agreement on methods of delivery, and the problems with security and copyright protection that have yet to be worked out put most of these plans in the "vaporware" category.

Napster's community of users sharing the music they were passionate about without regard to label (or, true, copyright) was one of the service's strongest points for retaining user loyalty. The ease of finding the music you wanted, whether it was the latest hits or a 30-year-old half-remembered favorite on Napster's 160-million user servers was a large part of the attraction, one that most experts say is lost in the label's rush to ensure that they can continue to control the music industry.

The labels' entry into the downloadable music field is complicating matters too much for the average user, most agree. Not only are the new services going to have to compete with each other, but also with the Napster-clone pirate servers which continue to spring up to offer a free alternative.

Until details such as how much each competing service costs, how the music will be delivered, protection from copyright infringement and how users will be able to find what they're looking for is worked out, most don't see consumers willing to line up to sign up for any of the new services. We'll just have to wait and see who comes up with a service attractive enough to consumers to compel them to open their wallets while they open their hard drives.