Firstly, apologies, this is a long post!
Two separate issues are discussed here:
1) The implementation
2) The mechanism
While the first is currently pretty expensive and being offered by a company unlikely to find much favour on a mac bullitin board, the actual value depends on your attitude to music. Would you subscribe if it was $10 a month? How about $5? How about paying $0.10 for a track for a month? It's about finding the right balance so that the cheapest option for your music purchasing habits.
The second point is more important - Napster may come and go, other services be offered alongside, pricing structure and limitations can change, but the point about people wanting to (or not) rent music is one of perception.
For my own view, a subscription service is something that is actually quite temting, much more so that one like iTunes.
Thinking back to the heady, halcyon days of the original Napster, evolving to Kazaa, Gnutella et al. before they all got swamped and filled with poor quality and deliberately distorted garbage. Many people gorged themselves on limitless free music. This wasn't going to go on forever and sure enough the law has been catching up. But it instilled a new attitude towards music and one commercial ventures are trying to tame. Music is disposable - listen once, never again. If you are someone who still listens to all or most of the CDs you bought from a few years back, stop reading now. I don't. Very few people I know do. I have simply deleted hundreds of files I downloaded back then and I am very glad I didn't pay for them. Their value to me was $0.05
not $0.99 (not that there was the option of paying anyway!).
I look back on the music from just a year or two ago and genuinely fail, in 80% of the cases, the understand what I saw in it - like an ex that tore out your heart, you look back and see them for the slag or ****** they really are.
Music, imho, is becoming like the DVD you rent, I look at the DVD's I have bought (£10 - £15 a go) and there are maybe 2 or 3 I have actually saved money on. Entertainment for an hour, not for life. CDs I bought are the same, never listen to. Waste. Of. Money.
It is this attitude, not the music, that Napster is trying to sell. It makes sense to rent most of your music because genres, bands, songs are merely transient. (important Note : some are not, of course, there are classics but these survive the rental test and are worth purchasing in the flesh). Music provision is no longer a sale,
it is a service, like cable, broadband, phone, electricity, or a mobile phone.
Lastly, consider the past and future of music.
Sony revolutionised music with the Walkman because it meant you could take
your music with you.
Apple have revolutionised music with the iPod because it meant you could take
all your music with you.
Over the next few years, with WiFi / WiMax access points everywhere, a WiFi enabled player and a subscription, you can take
all music with you.
Using Crapster over a broadband connection is (OK, should be
) not a matter of downloading some carefully selected tracks or meticulously building a playlist - music nerds have plenty on offer already, but you can still do that if you want - it is downloading 100+ tracks a week. It is unlimited broadband compared to dial-up. No planning downloads, no worrying about remote files or filesystems, it's "there" on your computer at the click of a mouse. Stop being discerning about your tastes and dive in, music is not a luxury, is not a quality product, it is cheap throwaway pap (broad generalisation, again!) - how many people archive their ringtones?
It is
your radio, whatever music you want, whenever you want it.
Get the top 50 pop / dance / indie chart, get <your music hero>'s all time top 100. Get 100 recommended songs and rate them for next week's 100 personalised recommendations. Some may be on your hard drive already, some can be downloaded while you listen in a matter of seconds. Filled your hard disk? Just delete the rubbish you don't listen to (or even automatically by least last played and erase your cache) it only take a few seconds if you ever want it back. (Napster could even share the bandwidth, utilising people's own cache and upstream bandwidth DRM on P2P with $2 off a month if you do)
You simply browse the tunes and playlists, click on whatever you want to listen too and off you go. You want it, you get it. Want to fill up your tryPod for a weeks holiday? Grab a bunch of tracks and head off into the sunset. Having a party and getting abuse for your taste in tunes? Whatever your mates want to listen to, they can have ... no extra cost. Partner's parents round for dinner? impress them with the opera you would never buy in a hundred years. Writing a report? Grab a 'soothing' playlist and let it run while you type.
To me, the
potential is there to return to the good old days of gorging yourself (in a slighty more honest fashion!).
Sorry, this has gone on waaaay to long but, actual implementation aside, I can see this could be a fantastic way to get music.
