Wednesday, July 6, 2005 |
11:06 - At the all-you-can-eat buffet, the food doesn't turn to poison after you leave the table ... usually...
http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/000357.html
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I've said it before, and it bears repeating: for some people, Napster's subscription-based, all-you-can-eat music downloading service is a better deal than iTunes':
The digital music player has to be compatible with Napster because every time you log on to Napster with your player, it reports your listening back to Napster. Napster then compensates the record companies and artists accordingly.
Bottom line: To fill an MP3 player with music today - and variety is what I want - I could spend $1000 for 1000 songs over at iTunes, or $15 per month at Napster. I'm going with Napster.
...But this post (via InstaPundit), which purports to be a how-to for listening to podcasts on Napster's client rather than in iTunes, touts the same line that Napster's advertising does, and for which it requires tiny little fine print to avoid lawsuits from enraged customers who didn't realize that the deal really was too good to be true.
Yeah, $15/month for unlimited downloads is pretty much "too cheap to meter". No downside, right? Well, sure there is. You have to "punch in" once a month with your Napster-compatible MP3 player and client program and report back to Napster every song that you listened to and how many times; if you don't, all your downloaded songs become unplayable. If you decide to stop using the service, sure, you've only paid $15 for each month you used it; but you have nothing to show for it, either. No ownership. Just useless files on your hard disk.
This is an apples-and-oranges comparison. It's not "two competing music download services, one of which is absurdly overpriced and one of which is wonderful and nearly free"; it's two completely different models of music enjoyment, one where you're forever tied to a central corporate mothership that has the power to revoke your music-listening capability any time, and one where you buy a song and then own it, forever. Sure, they cost the buyer differently. But for many—most, in fact, judging by the numbers—it's absolutely worthwhile to own music outright rather than rent it and send it back into the void after you've consumed it, moving on to new and greener pastures of yet-unlistened bounty (90% of which is, typically, you-know-what).
There's an interesting continuum developing these days regarding how people enjoy music. At one end of the spectrum, there's radio, where you have zero control over what a given station plays—"Let a professional make your next playlist," as Microsoft patronizingly exhorts. Then there's satellite radio, with a bit more control and certainly more communication to the user as to what's playing—the benefit of a digital medium. Then you get stuff like Napster, the subscription services, where you are expected not to own the music you download, but to buy only a temporary license to play it in the sort order you define and on the device you choose, and then let it slip away after a month, once you're sick of it. And at the far end is iTunes, where you buy music track by track and organize it into living, growing playlists structured around your personal listening habits, developing permanent and irreplaceable musical enjoyment pathways accreted over a period of years to suit your listening frequencies and personal ratings.
iTunes gives you total control, in other words, and that's what you're paying for. As you travel back up the spectrum toward traditional radio, the services cost the user less and less—but they also give you less and less choice and control.
People are free to pick where on the spectrum they're most comfortable. I know where I like to be, though, and I don't mind paying an arbitrary amount each month for songs I know I want to own forever, instead of $15 a month for the opportunity to renew the license for my favorite tunes for another thirty days.
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