“We rent homes. We rent cars. We rent movies. Why not rent music? It might be a very good deal. We now have more options than ever for buying music – we can purchase CDs from Web sites and stores and download music from online services,” Maureen Ryan reports for The Chicago Tribune.
Ryan reports, “All that is now fairly routine for many entertainment consumers: You go to a site such as Apple’s iTunes store or the new Napster and pay around 99 cents for an individual song, which you can store and play on your computer, or burn to a CD and transfer to a portable music device a certain number of times.”
“Some legal download services such as Rhapsody or Napster let you buy a subscription for about $10-$15 a month so you can download and listen to thousands of songs on your computer. The catch is, you generally can’t transfer those songs to a music player or put them on a CD unless you pay an additional $1 per track,” Ryan reports. “So, what if you could pay a flat monthly fee to download as many songs as you want and transfer them to your music player – but they’d only be playable for a certain length of time?”
Ryan reports, “Before you dismiss the concept out of hand, consider this: Microsoft is exploring it.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Consider this, Microsoft is exploring it.” Big flippin’ deal, Maureen. Unlike the Joe and Jane Six Packs of the world we don’t believe Microsoft can do no wrong. In fact, about all it seems to be able to do without help is wrong. The last thing Microsoft dreamt up on their own? Microsoft Bob
I wonder if MS would get into the spouse rental business. This “until death do us part” just isn’t working anymore and just think of all the money MS could take back from the lawyers.
Just a response:
“People like Russel are the reason why the service may not be stillborn. They just don’t realize that while they can download unlimited number of songs, none of them can be legally burned on CDs. Furthermore, they don’t realize they may end up with thousands of worthless files when they stop the subscription payment. All the effort to find and download the songs is wasted, not to mention a waste of bandwidth.”
Ok, you make a few very good points. If the service does not allow you to burn CD’s, then I agree that it is absolutely worthless for my needs and would be completely disinterested. Obviously I would not blindly “trust” Microsoft and sign up thinking it allowed CD burning, when in reality it doesn’t. I’m not stupid, just making a guess now. Nobody can say whether or not Microsoft will allow you to burn CD’s with your music, unless you do work for Microsoft and know their plans, in which case I doubt you’ll be visiting this website. So let’s see how it really is.
As for Mac Daddy,
I agree with your discussion there. You make some very valid points; Because Microsoft owns the music and the subscription fees, it is very easy for them to raise the price. And I wholeheartedly agree that it is very dangerous, because it they choose to raise the price to a high enough level, I’m sure I would quit, and as a result I would be forced to void ALL of my music I had spent so much time collecting. As a result, I would be utterly devoid of music, and that’s obviously a bad place to be.
But I also want to be cautious here: We are living in a capitalist system: Apple is currently winning. Therefore, so long as iTMS provides valid competition, Microsoft CANNOT raise their fees or they will most certainly lose all their business, and as a result they will void their willingness to provide music.
As a result, I doubt Microsoft would raise their fees for the music UNLESS they had a commanding lead in the market, i.e. put Apple out of business in this sector! In which case, you would be right, but by then iTMS would be gone, and then everyone here would be in a bind with worthless songs.
Does that make sense? It’s a little confusing, but it still makes sense to me. I think it is important to remain unbiased in this situation. There are plenty of people out there who blindly follow Microsoft because they own Windows and are confused.
-Russell
1. Rent tons of music.
2. Save to HD with Wire Tap or Audio Hijack (or similar Windows progs)
3. Profit!
allofmp3.com has some free songs available also, but the download is very slow. CSNY’s Deja Vu entire album is free, as well as some Nine Inch Nails tracks.
“2) We rent cars usually at locations that are too far to take the car we OWN”
Not entirely. There are plenty of people who lease (ie rent) cars because they don’t drive that much or they like to get a new car every few years.
I think rental music probably has a place with some people. The issue is ubiquity of use. I want to be able to play the rented music in the car, on the boat, at the beach, in my office, and I want to do it on a variety of different devices–I want to use the CD player in my car, the boombox I keep on my boat, my portable digital music player at the beach, and the computer in my office. If I can’t use it in all these different places–or I have to go out and buy all new devices in order to use it in all these different places–I’m not interested.
I’d also want a purchase plan. To me, rented music would be for a sort of “Radio Station” where I could download and listen to music. So I could download the new album for Felix da Housecat and listen to it for a week. If I didn’t like it, no biggie. If I did, I could buy it for, say, $2.50. Or may five free tracks or something.
I wouldn’t put it past M$ to rent the music and get some kid to post a crack somewhere else if it’ll bring them ownership of the market. In the N years that it’d take M$ to “fix” the problem, a lot of competitors would have fallen by the wayside, leaving M$ free to rejig the service into a more conventional model.
Cynical? Yes, but it’s high time that M$ issue a patch … for their image of low integrity. They talk about “innovation” all then time when all they do is cultivate their monopoly or absorb [like the Borg] real innovators.
That said, I don’t think that’s their plan, though I don’t doubt it was considered and rejected for some other plan.
Less is More
Peter, leasing is entirely different than renting. Please don’t confuse the two.
My name says it all. 10,000 songs and counting. All free, without a virus, yet. Why push the envelope when you can live without knowing one exists?
Russell,
No, I don’t work for Microsoft. However, you just need to look around to know that music subcription service is not like a magazine subscription at all, i.e. when you quit subscribing, you don’t get to keep everything during the subscription period. There is a reason why MS is very interested in this because it’s a recurring revenue. The only way you can burn a CD is when you break the encryption, which is illegal under DCMA. Check out the existing subscription services if you want to know more.
Google and read Janus and Palladium for Microsoft’s idea of DRM-ing just about anything and put control under MS thumb.
“As a result, I doubt Microsoft would raise their fees for the music UNLESS they had a commanding lead in the market, i.e. put Apple out of business in this sector! In which case, you would be right, but by then iTMS would be gone, and then everyone here would be in a bind with worthless songs.”
Yet another inaccuracy. Once you buy a song from iTMS, you can burn them to an Audio-CD which is an ISO-standard non-encrypted CD. iTMS can go under now and you still can listen to your music until you break your CD. If iTMS is gone, the worst is you can’t buy more music from iTMS.
Bottom line is, never give MS a chance to ruin anything when possible. The moment you give MS a benefit of a doubt, they’ll turn around and bite you. They’ve been proven morally bankrupt in their business dealings.
AllofMP3.com gets my business because iTunes is a US only service. We don’t seriously expect iTunes in Australia ever. We can’t even get Apple Australia to organise photo processing from iPhoto!
I don’t know about most people but I listen to music depending on my mood and whether I am working, relaxing or even at a party. I have collected (legally through owned CDs and online bought music) 129 albums of different genre. I will not need anymore music for a long time. Why the hell should I keep paying for this music? I got it. It’s done. It’s over. It’s mine and I don’t need anymore. In 5 years all of a sudden I have paid double or even triple what it has cost in to own? But now it’s all gone since I stopped paying a monthly fee? Screw that noise. I will have this music for years and years to come. I will pass it on to my children, my children’s children, and so on. Keep 80’s hair metal alive. lol…
NeoMonkey is right. Within a month or two there will be a hack for M$ DRM. People will rent for a month, Steal thousands or tens of thousands of songs, and then quit. Even with a hack for stripping Fairplay DRM, at least you know that for someone to steal 200 dollars worth of songs, they will have to pay 200 dollars first. I wonder how the record company’s are gonna like this when they pull their heads out of you know where and realize that M$ is not the company to trust when it comes to security.
Neo and Jack: indeed. It would be very easy for Apple to introduce the subscription scheme: we already have the 30 secs preview, subscribe and it is the entire lenght. What takes? Maybe iTMS developers dig into code for an afternoon. Why not done? Because the second a hack is found to burn those full-lenght preview and RIAA realizes what is going on they pull the plug. End of online music.
Mic
Is there any music we probably don’t already have on CD that’s worth renting anyway? Much of the so called songs available today are total crapola, not worth spending 5 minutes listening to let alone spending $25 a month to rent.
In reply to Johnson Jameson asking for a link to the story about Microsoft charging for the FAT file system used on compact flash cards:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0312/03120403microsoftisfat.asp
Sorry about the delay as I’ve been busy today and was unable to dig up the info until a moment ago.
Russell:
I disagree big time. MS has probably already determined that iPod users most likely would not choose to use the MS online music store. MS’s market is likely those people with jukeboxes incompatible with iTunes. Therefore, MS wouldn’t care less about iPodders. MS would target all other jukebox folks since non-Podders wouldn�t be using iTunes anyhow.
Ryan reports, “Before you dismiss the concept out of hand, consider this: Microsoft is exploring it.”
Whoopie doo dah! What is wrong with her? If MS was thinking about selling baked turds, Ryan would be thinking of the uses of baked turds. I swear I hope there is an e-mail address attached to the article.
I forgot to mention that Ryan is a senseless twit.
Nuff said.
Renting SUCKS!
It’s a short term mentallity – I rented a flat for a year and it cost me more than having a mortgage a month!
Owning is the best longterm investment!
I WOULD NEVER ‘RENT’ MUSIC ANYWAY!!
LET ALONE FROM MICROSHIT!