It is rather less ambitious effort than the IBM Corp-Blockbuster Entertainment Corp project in the US, which conceives of record stores creating compact disks on the spot by downloading the music over the phone, but NEC Corp is making music files available on its on-line bulletin board service for users of its PC-9800 line of personal computers. According to Newsbytes, the new facility enables users to download music files in MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface format for playing on personal computers and electronic instruments with a MIDI port. It started with 300 titles but aims to add 100 a month and hit 2,000 by the end of next year. The service is $3.50 a title but then everything is prohibitively expensive in Japan.
