MusicNet as a rental service for mp3 files
Posted on 25/06/01 22:24 by Jan Willem                             
MusicNet as a rental service for mp3 files
MP|3 used our newssubmit to tell us about an article on Newsbytes with more information on the legal version of Napster called MusicNet. This is a service by the major record labels where you can download a certain amount of songs when you have paid a monthly fee.

The service is like renting a video, when you are not subscribed anymore you are no longer able to play the songs. Well let's see if this is going to work...


Consumers pay $12 to $15 a month (final price isn't set) for access to a certain number of songs. If the user decides to cancel the service later, the songs, although still on the hard drive, will no longer be playable.

"If you're a consumer and you rent a video, when you return it, you don't have it anymore," says Rob Glaser, the CEO of RealNetworks and interim CEO of MusicNet, a consortium of Real, America Online and record labels EMI, Bertelsmann and Warner Music.

"MusicNet starts as a rental service and then can evolve into different things," Glaser says. "You can say, 'I really like that song, I want to buy it,' and we'll give you a permanent digital copy. We might also give the consumer credit for already renting it."

Real's demo of MusicNet shows a Napster-like interface with a search function that leads to a library of clickable songs. At the top of the page is a note of "remaining tokens," showing how many songs they have left to download or stream (listen to instantly). In one demo, the allotment was 70 downloads and 178 streams.

Source: Newsbytes.com

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Reactions
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By Guest, Tuesday 26 June 2001 07:57
man there is some greedy motherfuckers in this would...renting digital information... whats next a tax on the air we breath?
By d42, Tuesday 26 June 2001 21:26
You cannot compare renting a video to having a song in your music collection. You can only watch a film four or five times before you get bored of it, that's why renting is a good idea. However, you can listen to a CD hundreds (if not thousands) of times and still not get bored of it. I don't think this service will be popular because they are placing fundamental restrictions on what you can do with music you have already paid for. The fact that you can't play music after you stop subscribing is outrageous. That would mean you'd have to pay $15 (or however much they decide to charge in the future) indefinitely just to listen to your own music. Let's say you stop subscribing after three years. All the music you would have collected would suddenly disappear and you would be left with nothing. If you'd spent that $15 buying a CD each month, you'd have 36 more CDs in your collection to keep forever. Furthermore, if you can only access music when you subscribe, why are there any restrictions on the amount of music you can download? And what if you want to put the music on your MP3 player? Will they allow this, and will they place restrictions on how many times you can play a song? Also, programs like Total Recorder with its virtual sound driver can easily defeat the protection to make an unprotected WAV file. In short, MusicNet can go fuck itself.
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