Online music company MusicNet and digital video services company Cflix on Tuesday launched a digital music service for colleges and universities, with their first agreement a two-month pilot at Yale.
MusicNet said it will power a service called Ctrax that will provide low-priced music downloads at up to 20 U.S. universities in the fall of this year. Ctrax is being offered by Cflix, which delivers educational and entertainment video-on-demand services to universities.
Ctrax will offer more than 700,000 songs from MusicNet’s library and features customized for each school. The files will be stored locally at each school, making downloads faster.
Final pricing has not been set, but during the Yale test, a subscription will cost $2 a month, with downloads in packs of 10 for $8 and 20 for $15. Full albums will sell for anywhere from $8 to $12.
The Yale pilot is set to last for two months and is designed primarily to gather feedback on the look and feel of the service ahead of its full launch.
New York-based MusicNet counts as its shareholders Bertelsmann AG, EMI Group Plc, RealNetworks Inc., Sony Corp. and Time Warner Inc.
Last year, Penn State signed a deal with online music service Napster, a unit of Roxio Inc., to offer the service free to all students under a regular technology fee they already pay each semester.
