Digital music company Pressplay has said it will allow users to burn downloaded tracks onto CD in a bid to compete more effectively with its rivals.

You'd have thought Pressplay's decision would be unlikely to please the music industry, but since it’s a joint venture between Sony and Vivendi Universal, it must have had their blessing at least. Pressplay also has a licence to sell EMI's digital music catalogue.

Sony, don't forget, also produces CD-R drives, with which it bundles MusicMatch's Jukebox music management and CD-burning facilities. So Sony clearly knows that music CD creation is a big selling point for hardware.

Pressplay CEO Andy Schuon said the ability to allow CDs to be created from downloads was a crucial feature for music fans and that it would bring the company a competitive advantage. A moot point the latter, since Pressplay is ultimately a distributor, not a retailer of music. And RealNetworks, one of the driving forces behind Pressplay's main rival, MusicNet, already has a deal with Roxio to license the latter's CD burning code.

However, CD burning is believed to be essential to building successful subscription-based online music ventures. Roxio's software will presumably stop anyone burning stacks of discs for all their chums, which is clearly a major concern for the music business. So don't necessarily expect a CD packed with tracks downloaded from one of Pressplay's retailers, including Yahoo!, MSN, MP3.com and Roxio itself, to be playable on a hi-fi. ®

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