myplay Unveils New

Although both MP3.com and myplay.com (http://www.myplay.com) offer users a place to keep their music on the Internet for anywhere access, myplay.com says they do it legally. That's because myplay.com users must actually upload files to their online accounts.

Myplay.com users are given "storage locker" with 250MB of space (theequivalent of 60-70 CD-quality songs). At first, their locker is empty but the company offers a number of free songs that can be instantly added to their accounts. Users can also upload MP3 files to their lockers.

MyPlay.com launched in November, so it actually pre-dates MP3.com's Beam-It Service. Today it updated its offerings to include a "Batch Upload" feature so members can add multiple music files from their hard drives.

"Many of our users have already accumulated a lot of digital music ontheir hard drives," said Founder and SVP of Business Development DavidPakman. "myplay customers who are making a new home for their musiccollections on the Web let us know that Batch Upload was a feature they reallyneeded."

To use the new feature, members must actually download software. It provides right-click access to user's myplay.com account and can choose an entire folder of files (MP3, Liquid Audio (.LQT), Windows Media (.WMA) or WAV files) to upload.

The difference may between MP3.com and myplay.com may seem elemental, but it was enough to make the RIAA (http://www.riaa.org) file suit against MP3.com a few weeks ago claiming they don't have rights to digitize the music.