Latest installment on RIAA's downlooad plans ...

Universal, the biggest of the labels, said it planned to offer its catalog for download later this summer at 99 cents a song, or $9.99 an album.

Ten dollars an album! After you provide your own CD, print the cover and burn it yourself? They really get this don't they?

Notices that too...$10 is definitely unrealistic. But this *is* a step in the right direction. I think most record companies see their future pretty clear, it just hangs on two rather large issues:

- Content (ie, all majors and most independents should participate in some sort of portal) at reasonable quality (no 96 kbps crap). How long will it take to digitized their music? How on earth are you going to get these hundreds of companies to cooperate?
- Micropayments. I wouldn't mind paying 10 cents a download (and looking at the success of SMS with everyone including kids, these prices look realistic), but at the moment, there's no way to pay for this that is both easy to use (like SMS) AND economically viable. If you're going to sell songs for 10 cents, per-unit transaction costs should not exceed 2-3 cents or else it's just not worth it.

This situation would still leave a lot of specialized stuff out (white labels, promos, live sets, bootlegs), but I would be surprised if that share of the market is larger than 10%.

I'm downloading the free trial at present. It looks like they're going to try and prevent you from getting the mp3's themselves, having to deal with this crap player called "Rhapsody".

Idiots.

If you think Universals plan bites just remember that a year or so ago Sony had a similar scheme that costed $3 a track.
For an mp3.
Probably a 128 bitrate CBR in joint stereo. Maybe with ads tacked onto the head or tail of the track.
Be that as it may...Universal's scheme may be cheaper...but Universal is the last company I'd trust. These are the same people that made it abundantly clear that EVERY album they will make from here on out will have copy-prevention (or fair-use prevention technology, to be more accurate.)

My personal fave has been the copy-prevention tech so screwed up that if you play the CD in a Macintosh, it jams the CD player so it can't eject and then makes the OS crash. Niiiiiice.

Well the interface isn't actually too bad, and the sound quality is pretty decent. There's not a huge amount of content available at present. (Well, not in the Jungle/Artcore section, at any rate)

I assume that things will get better, but for the moment they have a lot of stuff listed that can't actually be listened to on-demand. I take it that this is because they haven't gotten around to encoding a lot of it, but it's frustrating none-the-less.

They have a bunch of "radio stations" (essentially streamable playlists of genres), and I'm currently listening to one called "Downtempo", and hearing a rather nice Plaid track ("Shackbu") at a good quality. (It only says it's "Hi-Fi", I would guess a rather well encoded 128-160kbps mp3)

Would I pay for a service like this? I actually think that I could, potentially. About 5 minutes in, and I'm pretty chuffed.

More news to follow.

Oh shit, they just started playing Lamb. I retroactively tone down my enthusiasm in the above post.

Okay, it appears that we'll be allowed to download albums and burn them to CD, although we'll have to use the 'Rhapsody' program to burn them.

Provided that the price stays the same, I think there'll be one primary use for this service. (for me, at least) Their radio stations will prove useful for me, in that they play a whole bunch of stuff I haven't heard before, or have only fleetingly heard. With a bit of fucking around I was able to record the radio stream digitally (ie, no quality loss), and I've now got 7 new tracks of my very own, for free!

BoC - Amo Bishop Rodin
Mocean Worker - Summertime / Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child
Afro-Mystik - Samba De Rua
Handsome Boy Modeling School - The Truth
Lefty's Choice - Phase Selector Sound
Daddylonglegs - A Man Called Betty
DJ Krush - Day's End

I was able to record the radio stream digitally (ie, no quality loss)
The copy will only be as good as the original. If the source is cruddy, thin, trebly or watery...well...
And for anybody on a dial-up, the sreams will always suck.

RE: copy "prevention" CDs
i think this board has already covered this subject somewhere but if you wanna copy the latest celine dion or any copy prevented cd just get a black felt tip marker and carefully colour in the junk data track (first or last i forget) anyways, that apparently gets rid of any computer/car/portable cd player problems including the mac crash.

I wrote about this a while ago for Pitchfork, and specifically about Rhapsody - which is the best of the three services, especially now that it's signed all five major labels.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/watw/02-04/celestial-jukebox.shtml

These subscription services obviously don't replace downloading stuff for free, because it costs money, it's a stream instead of a download, there's limited burning, and basically, you can't do whatever you want with it - you can listen to a lot of music but only through the computer. (I mainly listen in the car, so I'm s. o. l.) Further, most people just can't picture paying for any of this right now - there's no motivation to spend money, however little. And Rhapsody and the others don't get new releases for a while - same deal as how movies play in the theaters for a while before they come to Blockbuster.

I don't know if they'll make it, this time around. (Listen.com, which makes Rhapsody, needs to be profitable next year.) But I think there's potential here. For listening to music on the computer, I find Rhapsody far more convenient than downloading an entire album - you press one button and it's playing, and the quality is consistent. There's definitely a price point that would make it work. If you could listen to any album that's ever been recorded for $1/month, people would do it. That's obviously not going to happen, but there must be something in between that would interest consumers.

I also think this is a big step toward a new model of music consumption, where people don't own music on CD - or in any form. If it's always out there and you can call it up at any time, why bother hanging onto it (except for a few discs you're really into, or as collectibles)? That's my "50 years from now nobody'll use pencils and we'll all live on the moon"-type prediction.

I also think this is a big step toward a new model of music consumption, where people don't own music on CD - or in any form. If it's always out there and you can call it up at any time, why bother hanging onto it (except for a few discs you're really into, or as collectibles)? That's my "50 years from now nobody'll use pencils and we'll all live on the moon"-type prediction

Why do we want to own music if it's on tap? I think the main reason is that as well as colleting we like curating music. We like to make mix-tapes for ourselves and loved ones.

Free, always available online music is nothing to me unless I also get to sort it and give my curation as a gift to my friends. That's what the RIAA really wants to combat - music becoming a commodity component of a higher level dicourse. But that's what's happening (which is why DJs can make more money than bands.) And we, ordinary punters want to get in on the action, which is why we have website for posting our tracklists, and ILM for making various "best of" and "most recent" lists.

I figure a smart RIAA sponsored online music service would combine a music downloading with tracklist uploading service. And would charge the *uploaders* to make their mixes available. I'd be more likely to pay to sponsor my mix being online for other people to download free, than to pay for the tracks.

I've heard people talking about the idea that music would always be avaliable on demand, etc. which would replace record collections. I can see this, but it seems like what would be needed are 1) a stereo componant that allows you to tune in all the music -- I don't want to have to sit at my computer! and 2) 99.99% reliable connections to this music (that is, I only lose access to the music as often as, say, my receiver breaks now, which has happened once in 20 + years of music listening). Until those problems are addressed I'm not interested.

Oddly enough, MSN appears to be offering this in the UK for £14.97 a month... can't say the stuff they're offering looks much cop though.

we already won! file sharing will go on foreva!

Why do we want to own music if it's on tap? I think the main reason is that as well as colleting we like curating music. We like to make mix-tapes for ourselves and loved ones.

Also, networks fail sometimes, which is currently a big minus to keeping all your music as streams. My DSL goes out for 24 hours at least every other month... if my whole music collection was unplayable then, I'd go nuts. And there's the possibility of DOS attacks against the service and bandwith issues if it became too popular.

Saying that audio-on-demand will take over may be kind of gonzo. I think it's safe to say that an increasing percentage of people's collections are computer files, though, which has some interesting implications.