3 ms·

What are the options? The current .99/song method, $20/month stream-all-you-want, or possibly a per month fee for a universal licence. (Then, instead of suing d

What are the options? The current .99/song method, $20/month stream-all-you-want, or possibly a per month fee for a universal licence. (Then, instead of suing downloaders, they could just force them to pay the fee--not too onerous.)

iamdave 18y ago
I'd very quickly pay a monthly fee for a universal license, provided it's free of DRM and anything like it, lets me use it how I want and pretty much exhibit the common sense rights that come when you purchase something.
- jmatt 18y ago
  So, after a month, when you've downloaded 10 terabytes worth of music you'd just cancel the subscription. I guess you may have to re-enable it everyone few years to update your collection... So yeah, I agree, if that were available I'd be the first to sign up and buy my array of hard drives. I think napster is the most viable existing service that provides a service close to what you are talking about. It has DRM to prevent these types of abuses. It's otherwise affordable. It's not like most people around here don't know how to take DRMed music and rip it...
  - iamdave 18y ago
    Being realistic, no. I'm not the kind that downloads gigs upon gigs of music. Honest and truly, I've only downloaded 3 albums at a time, and that's kept me full for a while.
  - paul9290 18y ago
    For me Im fine with having all music in the cloud. Why do i want to buy hard drives and manage a huge collection of mp3s? I use to but got tired of doing so...now with my iPhone I just stream the music I want to hear. SOme of these iphone apps and services cache the music so when i have no internet I listen to the cache.
    - tphyahoo 18y ago
      This is very interesting for me, a non-iphone owner. Could you be more specific about the apps you use and the caching features? I'm interested in moving my music into the cloud as well. Thanks. Edit: were you referring to a theoretical service or a real one?
mechanical_fish 18y ago
a per month fee for a universal license That's it, most likely. Sooner or later this will be the most viable strategy for making money on music. Even if the internet were turned off tomorrow, the continuing presence of rippable media (analog media, if nothing else), the easy availability of ripping tools, the fact that most people can't hear the difference between a really good recording and a merely average one, and the prevalence of terabyte hard drives with ever-falling prices means that sooner or later we will all have the recording industry's entire back catalog stored in our homes. It's just a question of how much time it will take, and whether the primary medium of transmission will be P2P downloading or face-to-face swapping of the contents of physical storage media. Ironically, perhaps the best way to prevent the music lover of the year 2020 from energetically acquiring his or her own private Universal Music Library is to give out reasonably priced universal licenses. Once I know that I don't have to own my own copy of (e.g.) the complete works of Yanni -- that, if I ever feel some strange desire to listen to them, or to force someone else to listen to them, I can always P2P them from NapTorrent 4.0 in three minutes without any additional cost, difficulty, or risk -- I won't actually have to own them. The cloud can take on that task.
- quantumhobbit 18y ago
  The problem with a per month fee is that it creates no incentives to produce good music. In the old systems artists who produced music people wanted to hear were rewarded with record sales and crappy artists didn't get paid. With an all-you-can-eat model of music, especially for p2p distributed, how does the record label know whose music is worth more based on downloads. There will be little incentive to sign on new or indie groups and pay them while the consumers will likely download their music anyway, assuming it is covered by the all-you-can-eat license. New artist would be shut out of the system unless the had some sort of connection(corruption, manufactured pop group) to the record label. And the record labels wouldn't even have to pay current artists in proportion their success if that success can't be measured. Even if they measure success by torrent activity, there would be still little incentive to sign new groups. As always the little guy gets screwed. Maybe this could be arranged to work and even be better than the current system. But, I don't want to pay a monthly fee that goes to 90% of music that I don't like just to get the 10% I do like.
GavinB 18y ago
The new Napster is $15 a month. I can listen my music on any computer and on my portable mp3 player. The artists and labels get paid based on which music I listen to. The DRM really isn't a big deal, because I can listen from anywhere with internet without even installing software. It's "Music As A Service" and it seems very fair and reasonable to me. To be honest, my only complaint with Napster is that Apple refuses to let their hardware be interoperable.

iamdave 18y ago

I'd very quickly pay a monthly fee for a universal license, provided it's free of DRM and anything like it, lets me use it how I want and pretty much exhibit the common sense rights that come when you purchase something.

jmatt 18y ago
So, after a month, when you've downloaded 10 terabytes worth of music you'd just cancel the subscription. I guess you may have to re-enable it everyone few years to update your collection... So yeah, I agree, if that were available I'd be the first to sign up and buy my array of hard drives. I think napster is the most viable existing service that provides a service close to what you are talking about. It has DRM to prevent these types of abuses. It's otherwise affordable. It's not like most people around here don't know how to take DRMed music and rip it...
- iamdave 18y ago
  Being realistic, no. I'm not the kind that downloads gigs upon gigs of music. Honest and truly, I've only downloaded 3 albums at a time, and that's kept me full for a while.
- paul9290 18y ago
  For me Im fine with having all music in the cloud. Why do i want to buy hard drives and manage a huge collection of mp3s? I use to but got tired of doing so...now with my iPhone I just stream the music I want to hear. SOme of these iphone apps and services cache the music so when i have no internet I listen to the cache.
  - tphyahoo 18y ago
    This is very interesting for me, a non-iphone owner. Could you be more specific about the apps you use and the caching features? I'm interested in moving my music into the cloud as well. Thanks. Edit: were you referring to a theoretical service or a real one?

mechanical_fish 18y ago

a per month fee for a universal license That's it, most likely. Sooner or later this will be the most viable strategy for making money on music. Even if the internet were turned off tomorrow, the continuing presence of rippable media (analog media, if nothing else), the easy availability of ripping tools, the fact that most people can't hear the difference between a really good recording and a merely average one, and the prevalence of terabyte hard drives with ever-falling prices means that sooner or later we will all have the recording industry's entire back catalog stored in our homes. It's just a question of how much time it will take, and whether the primary medium of transmission will be P2P downloading or face-to-face swapping of the contents of physical storage media. Ironically, perhaps the best way to prevent the music lover of the year 2020 from energetically acquiring his or her own private Universal Music Library is to give out reasonably priced universal licenses. Once I know that I don't have to own my own copy of (e.g.) the complete works of Yanni -- that, if I ever feel some strange desire to listen to them, or to force someone else to listen to them, I can always P2P them from NapTorrent 4.0 in three minutes without any additional cost, difficulty, or risk -- I won't actually have to own them. The cloud can take on that task.

quantumhobbit 18y ago
The problem with a per month fee is that it creates no incentives to produce good music. In the old systems artists who produced music people wanted to hear were rewarded with record sales and crappy artists didn't get paid. With an all-you-can-eat model of music, especially for p2p distributed, how does the record label know whose music is worth more based on downloads. There will be little incentive to sign on new or indie groups and pay them while the consumers will likely download their music anyway, assuming it is covered by the all-you-can-eat license. New artist would be shut out of the system unless the had some sort of connection(corruption, manufactured pop group) to the record label. And the record labels wouldn't even have to pay current artists in proportion their success if that success can't be measured. Even if they measure success by torrent activity, there would be still little incentive to sign new groups. As always the little guy gets screwed. Maybe this could be arranged to work and even be better than the current system. But, I don't want to pay a monthly fee that goes to 90% of music that I don't like just to get the 10% I do like.

GavinB 18y ago

The new Napster is $15 a month. I can listen my music on any computer and on my portable mp3 player. The artists and labels get paid based on which music I listen to. The DRM really isn't a big deal, because I can listen from anywhere with internet without even installing software. It's "Music As A Service" and it seems very fair and reasonable to me. To be honest, my only complaint with Napster is that Apple refuses to let their hardware be interoperable.