Renting Music

[theknife]

i just cannot imagine who would pay for this, knowing that the day they stop, it all goes away:

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Is music something you own or something you rent?

How music fans answer that question in coming months will help determine the viability of a new slate of online music services that offer to fill portable music players with an unlimited number of songs for a monthly fee.

While the music subscription approach has grown in recent years, far more music fans have opted to buy songs by the track, a business model popularized by Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL)'s iTunes Music Store and its hugely successful iPod portable player.

But the release late last year of new copy-protection software from Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) may begin to change that. The software frees subscribers to move their rented tracks from their computers to certain portable music players.

The system works by essentially putting a timer on the tracks loaded on the player. Every time the user connects the player to the PC and the music service, the player automatically checks whether the user's subscription is still in effect. Songs stop playing if the subscription has lapsed. If the user doesn't regularly synch up the player with the service, the songs go dead as well.

http://apnews.myway.com//article/200...D880U7KO1.html

i'm not famous for my ability to forecast trends, but i just don't see an upside here. anybody else think this will fly?

[napho]

I don't see how it stands a chance.

[TankGirl]

Who on earth would want such an inconvenience when the same stuff is available in unrestricted and trouble-free formats. The people who design and roll out products like this must live in a parallel reality. They clearly have no idea of what the music consumers are doing on this planet today.

- tg

[TankGirl]

Good commentary on Napster's music rental model from The Register:

Why Napster will be a fully-integrated flop
By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
Published Friday 4th February 2005 00:11 GMT

Opinion Napster today graced the world with a "revolutionary new way to enjoy music" by starting something called the Napster To Go service. As we all know, revolutions often deliver unintended consequences. So let's have a look at where Napster's service may lead.

On the surface, the To Go model looks like a great replacement for Napster's previous subscription service. In the past, customers had to pay a monthly subscription fee that allowed them to rent as much music as they liked. Users then had to pay extra to download permanent versions of songs that could be transferred to a device or CD. Now, $14.95 per month lets you download as much music as you like to your computer and/or device.
Click Here

The big detractor, however, is that you still don't own the music. You rent it. Stop paying the Napster tax man, and all your music disappears.

This forces you to make a choice between quantity and permanence. Pay Napster every month and gain access to an almost limitless supply of music or buy select CDs, as you have in the past, and own them for years.

From where we sit, the math doesn't break down terribly well in Napster's favor.

Let's take a look at consumer A. This consumer goes to Amazon.com and does a search for Creative - one of the Napster supported music device makers - and picks up a 20GB player for $249.99. Let's assume he keeps the device for three years, paying Napster all the time. That's $538 for the Napster service, bringing the three-year total to $788.19.

Consumer B types iPod into the Amazon.com search engine and finds a 20GB device for $299. Apple doesn't offer a subscription service, so this customer has to buy songs at the 99 cent rate or at $9.99 per album. Subtracting the price of the iPod from the $788, consumer B would have $489 left over for music. That's roughly worth 489 songs or 49 albums.

We posit that during this three-year period both Consumer A and Consumer B will actually end up with close to the same number of songs on their devices. Customers do not, as Napster suggests, pay $10,000 to fill their iPods with 10,000 songs just because the capacity is there. They take their existing music, CDs and MP3s, and put that onto the device first, then later add iTunes songs as they go along. A Napster customer would have a similar mix of old music and new downloads.

The big difference here is that after the three years are up, Consumer B has something to show for his investment. He still owns the music. If the Napster customer stops paying for the service, his music is all gone. He's paying $179 per year to rent music. This isn't high quality stuff either. It's DRM (digital rights management)-laced, low bitrate slop.

You could once buy a CD and then play that music on your computer or in your car at will. Hell, you still can. You own it. You can burn an extra copy of the disc in case it gets scratched or pass along the disc to a friend to see if they like it - just like you would with a good book. Five years from now, you will still own the CD. No one can tell you where and when you can play it.

This is not the case in the Napster subscription world. After six years, you've tossed away $1,076 for something that barely exists. Forget to pay for a month and watch your music collection disappear. (Not to mention, you're betting on the fact that Napster will even exist two years from now. At least you know that a year's subscription to the Wall Street Journal will still work in 12 months time.)

Many of you have stood gloating in front of a might tower of CDs. "Witness my collection," you might think when friends are near. "This is part of me - my identity." You've spent ages picking out solid albums, sorting the strong from the weak.

With music and books, the idea is never to have all that is available. You want what's good. You want quality.

What's the advantage in paying for all of the tethered music on the planet? That's pointless gluttony and nothing more.

Even Napster seems to realize the vacuous nature of the deal.

"A fully-integrated marketing program will support the release of Napster To Go, led by a currently-under-wraps February 6, 2005 Super Bowl television advertisement," it says in a press release. "This will be complemented by the new 'Works with Napster To Go' logo program that enables consumers to easily identify Napster To Go compatible MP3 players at retail."

What is this marketing program integrated into? Is it possible to have a partially-integrated marketing program? Are we to be excited by logos now?

When the bullshit generator goes this far into overdrive, you know there are problems.

Napster plans to spend $30m to promote this new service. That's a cute total if you consider that Apple made close to $14m a day last quarter in iPod sales, shipping 4.6m devices. The only money to be had in this market is in the hardware, and Apple has it all locked up.

Here's hoping consumers will see the light and Napster To Go will go away.

[theknife]

you are just too quick, tg - i was just cutting a chunk out of that same article

but it's a good read, no? do the math - renting music just doesn't add up. Napster is such a bastard child of it's former self that i will cheerfully root for it's failure as a subscription model.

[JackSpratts]

not to be a contrarian, and i think this whole trend of renting not owning is a bad precedent in the ip wars but i can see a lot of users jumping all over this, and why not? they're already paying 10-13/mo for subscription radio, where they have no control at all. with this model, they fill 'er up at the pc station and they're good to go until they're sick of the stuff, then it's all new all over again. sure, 20 gigs is not a lot (5333 songs by my calculation and i'm sure the hardware capacity will increase, as will d/l speeds and quality), but after rotating them off, a three year total of accessed music could reach 50,000 tracks or more - which is some serious cabbage if one had to buy them all. and with all due respect to the above essayist, if p2p has taught us anything, it's that some people (ok me) have an almost unlimited appetite for fresh toona. "pointless gluttony"? ha! sounds like somebody needs a trip to the p2p imaginarium. sure i keep all my stuff, but i'm a p2p pack rat, an archivist. you should experience my virtual attic, dust bunnies and mp3 files competing with oggs, wavs, jpgs and htms for every last magnetic bit (all those who max out a drive more than 5x a week raise your hands). i can’t see ‘em, but I know they’re there, and that’s enough for me. still, not everybody collects, as a stop at any weekend tag sale will show and for those who just want variety and freshness, but a lot of it and right now, and who don't particularly care if they ever hear chilliwack again, this could be an option.

had this model preceded p2p it would've been a no-brainer out of the park home run. now it's a gamble but not much of one if the satellite radio business is any indication. like that one before it i think it'll fly.

oh, and btw. you can rip them all via analog. it's a pain in the ass but it's no harder than it was in the 80's, when chilliwack ruled man. lol.

- js.

[greentea150]

it never would happend in china...............