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MP3.com 'Subscriber Service'
nelomolen writes: "Looks like MP3.com is trying to promote a new $2.99/month ($29.99/year) ad-free service. as a listener I've come to love MP3.com as it provides exposure to a LOT of good music (and bad). In the past I know artists have had it out for MP3.com in regards to their "payback for playback" -- wonder if this new ad-free subscription service will help?"
When that my.mp3.com hoopla was going on, I stopped using mp3.com altogether. It was a good idea, but apparently they're the wrong people to do it.
why are you paying for ad removal service when you can just use a proxy like guidescope
WTF? I have to pay 20$ a month to get paid? Mp3.com takes their cut of the subscriber money and then redistributes the rest back to artists by popularity ... So alot of artists loosing money is paying for the few who are making alot of money :)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
I haven't really been paying attention to popular music the last few years. Are their any "break out" bands that have come out through the ranks of MP3.com? In other words, is there any of this "good music" that has appealed to a wide audience?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
You'd never know they existed, but eMusic is already offering unlimited mp3 downloads of major-label albums for $10/month.
I think the reason you don't hear anything about them is that they were acquired by Vivendi-Universal, who is quietly sitting on them until they roll out whatever big new service they're developing.
I assume eMusic's successor will only offer crippled mp3s that can't be copied or that expire after some period of time, but for now, they've got plain ol' mp3s -- and they even make it easy to download a whole album with one click.
The downside, of course, is that they have a limited selection of music. You can't download any CD ever recorded. But there is a lot of good music on there. For example, they seem to have the entire Fantasy Records catalogue online, which, if you're a jazz or blues fan, means a whole lot of really good albums. In the first week, I downloaded 62 albums.
I assume that one day eMusic will morph into something I no longer want to subscribe to, but until then I'm sucking down everything I can grab.
It's definitely worth checking out.
I have been an artist on mp3.com for about 3 years, and at first I thought it was a great place for an independant artist such as myself to promote my music, however as soon as commercial bands began having sites there I believe that mp3.com turned too much into something mtv-esque. For instance there are schlock bands such as the pre-made-on-tv O-town hosted there now. After that I decided I would add all new material to besonic.com, a great site which is populated mostly by independant artists. As for the payback for playback, I didn't really make enough money to warrent the 20$ a month it cost to stay in the program. I also believe that that program caused some artists to become greedy. Now they want visitors to pay aswell? I don't see it as being worth it. For all I know, I would say MP3.COM IS DYING. Perhaps they have suffered one suit too many.
The Slashdot Effect: A new for
What would happen if someone added micropayment downloads to Internet radio? This would require a custom player, which would be capable of both streaming and downloading (with secure payment). It would work something like this: In addition to the normal netradio controls, there would be a "buy" button on the interface. Clicking that button would cause the player to charge you a small amount ($1?) to download a high-quality version of the song that is currently playing. There could be additional "Would you like to know more?" buttons that would take you to more information on the artist, customized streams, user ratings, etc.
I thought mp3.com was supposed to take crap.. i mean not-well-known artists and give them publicity? Thats a good idea, better than choosing 5 loosers, making them popstars and then making a program about how they made the popstars.. lol.
Anything that works on a crippled download method will die a horrible death (unless they can get a really powerful law in to stop people hacking the software and then use scare tactics and make examples to make sure no-one tries to bring down their money making machine, but then who would do that?)
So, if they're to unknown to sell cds, then what makes them think people will want to pay for their compressed mp3s?
-tfga
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I'll only start paying MP3.com when it:
A: Stops raising the damn prices of CDs!!!! They have been slowly yet steadily raising the price, ugh! It now costs the same to download a CD as it used to buy one, grrrr.
B: GIVE ME SOME HIGHER BANDWIDTH FEEDS! 196KBp/s would be nice, 256KBp/s would be better. Crud, if I like the artists I pay for the CD anyways, well, I would be paying MORE, but they keep on RAISING THE DAMN PRICES! (See above comment).
It is now cheaper to go to independent labels, ugh. MP3.com of course used to be one, but then they FUCKED UP and let people store their RIAA crap on the MP3.com servers, ick!
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The music industry doesnt want you to pay for a single song, they want you to buy the whole album.
And for a commerical webcast radio that points you to the CD, the one I use does. http://www.tuneto.com/
Why would you use a proxy like guidescope when you can just download a pre-fab HOSTS file?
I'm sure the artists feel the same way.
What would happen if someone added micropayment downloads to Internet radio?
The answer is quite simple: everybody would stop using the service. People are quite used to free content on the Internet, as well as on the radio. Combining the two into a pay service would sink like a rock.
People on mp3.com setup radio stations of garage bands or simular tastes. They select a bunch of songs from mp3.com and make a playlist type radio station. If you are an free listener, you hear the radio spot ads between songs. But if you pay for the premium service you dont hear the ads. (Maybe 1 ad on the startup)
Myself I'm used to radio ads, so streaming mp3 ads dont bother me. I save 3 bux. lol
(Guidescope's Older Brother)
...which can be found at
http://www.junkbusters.com
nuclear presidential echelon assassination encryption virulent strain
Whizzmo
I have boycotted mp3.com since they banned The DeCSS Song. This song is obviously political commentary. How many other ideas have been quietly removed without anyone's knowledge? You can't miss what you never knew existed.
-Scott
What is bitrate? What bitrate are EMusic's MP3s encoded at?
Bitrate is the number of bits per second used in the encoding process. A higher encoding rate usually means a larger size file, but higher quality sound. EMusic currently encodes its MP3s at 128 Kbps.
Sounds like a good service, but I was hoping for something a bit better than that. I don't mind paying for music, but the quality has to be there.
How does EMusic protect against piracy? Very simple -- we trust our customers. We believe that if downloadable music is presented in an inexpensive and flexible way, most consumers will do the right thing.
It's a lot easier to trust your customers when you're offering 128K MP3s. Question is, space limitations or piracy worries anyway? I realize 180,000 songs takes up some room, but that's their problem, not mine. It would be nice to have different ranges too- maybe 64K to demo the song, and 320K if you actually want it. But I can't help but think that offering the songs in low quality is some kind of indication of fear of mass trading once the songs are released to the world.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Let's see, if a guy on Oak Street was selling popsicles for 25 cents a a
stick and another guy on Elm Street had the exact same popsicles for free,
where would you go? The simple fact of the matter is that consumers will
always make the most logical choice when acquiring what they want. In the
field of digital music, it is readily available for free via many
different routes on the internet. Hence, in setting up membership fees for
service, MP3.com will be nailing it's own coffin shut. Undoubtedly,
millions will abandon the service for something else out there that is
equally as resourceful and above all free (Morpheus come immedialty to mind).
For these companies, MP3.com ludicrous decision is a golden opportunity.
If MP3.com wants money, then fuck MP3.com. As a company, all they are is
a popular conduit for digital music tansfer - big deal. They've done
nothing to achieve loyalty in me as a consumer. If they are banking on the
fact that the majority of MP3.com users are capatilistic moral crusaders
who believe that paying for thier service is the noble thing to do - then
they are banking on bullshit. Furthermore, even if I did feel that way,
why should MP3.com be making any money? Nobody at MP3.com wrote the music.
They don't give a fuck about the artists, they just want money, like any
other company under the sun. Morpheus here I come, so long MP3.com.
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS - Richard Stallman, known as RMS to his friends and the community, announces an important change in the GNU project today, from his former home in the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab.
"For some time now, people have called me hypocritical in requesting the GNU/Linux name for the Linux kernel which has been attached to the operating system based upon the GNU toolchain. But I firmly believe the lack of GNU acknowledgement to be completely unfair," said an upbeat Richard Stallman at today's conference.
"But I understand that I have made a terrible mistake. I have been requesting a fair level of acknowledgement for the GNU project, while at the same time, I have failed to grant that same level of acknowledgement to myself!" he stated to the confused gathering of median and open source celebrities. "It was shameful of me to request acknowledgement in the Linux project, when my own GNU project suffers from the same problem."
His solution? "GNU will henceforth be known as Stallman/GNU."
"It is only fair that I, as the principal contributor to GNU, should have my name as part of the title. I am an intergal part of GNU, and without me, GNU would be nothing." According to Stallman, the GNU license will become the Stallman/GNU license. And projects based upon the former GNU license or software must carry the Stallman/GNU name.
"I am not backing off on my claim one bit that Linux should give proper recognition to its major components. And now that I have the moral authority to make such a claim. I am demanding that Linux be henceforth referred to as Stallman/GNU/Linux."
"We use Linux-based GNU systems today for most of our work, and we hope you use them too. But please don't confuse the public by using the name "Linux" ambiguously. Linux is the kernel, one of the essential major components of the system. The system as a whole is more or less the GNU system. And I am GNU."
When asked if he discussed the suggested name change in Linux with Linus Torvalds, Stallman repsonded, "Linux? Don't you mean Stallman/GNU/Linux?"
If they can pull these off, I'll sign up immediately for a more expensive monthly service. Also, contrast this with Napster's plan of having their own retarded proprietary format, where you pay monthly, and don't get to keep ANYTHING you downloaded after you quit the service.
The Free desktop that Just Works
What do the premium listeners hear then? silence?
or are there two seperate streams?
He's just all sour because he couldn't get Hurd to catch on...
Stops raising the damn prices of CDs!!!! They have been slowly yet steadily raising the price, ugh! It now costs the same to download a CD as it used to buy one, grrrr.
Are you sure that's all MP3.com's fault? According to their Help section for musicians, the artists are setting prices on their own CDs. MP3.com just sets the limits on the minimum/maximum price (currently $3.99 and $30.00, respectively) for the downloaded CDs, then adds $3.99 to determine the price of the physical CD.
Maybe too many artists bought into the hype they can get rich off the Internet? Or (more likely), they raised their CD prices to compensate for not being in the "Pay for Play" system?
Musicians don't always make sensible business choices when it comes to pricing CDs. (After all, if they knew everything about selling music, they'd probably run a record company.) For example, I've found one singer who charges $6.99 and $10.98 for the netCD and DAM versions of her CD, when the real thing only costs $6.49 through her label's web site. I like her music, but I have to wonder what she's thinking there....
Proud to be / Smiley-free / Since Nineteen / Ninety-Three
I think $20 is fair for a subscription service of this nature. Give something back to the community.
I could use the service to download songs that are great to listen to after hot kniving some really sticky buds. Music downloaded from this service would be great to listen to while really stoned.
The RIAA is a really evil group of people, but if they all smoked marijuana, maybe they would be more relaxed, and be a better crowd to deal with. Not so mean all the time.
Music that you have paid for is wonderful to listen to. Music that you have paid for, and listened to when smoking marijuana is even better.
they stopped being fun when they went public. It's very sad to see the number of early, early supporters they've completely alienated with their mercenary ways. The musicians who support them -- MP3.com could do pretty much anything at this point and they'd still support them, which is a shame. The musicians who don't support MP3.com any longer... this isn't going to bring them back.
+------------------------------------------------
+ The urge to destroy is a creative urge
Its a playlist, not 1 stream. The music is streamed per song, the playlist just has commericals inserted by mp3.com. Instead of inserting ads, they just skip them.
ah, I'm only familar with shoutcast
That only applies to CD's really: it costs the same amount of money to produce/distribute/carry a CD Single as a CD Album (and the single isn't significantly less expensive than a double album). The record industry spent decades on a single-based business model and prospered. The compact disc is the reason for the change in approach.
I would be reasonably sure that the record label that introduces affordable single file downloads will be successful. Most people I know only buy an album if they like two or more of the songs on it. The logical conclusion, therefore, is that there are a fair number of people who would buy one song but not the album, in which case, the record label is ahead on the deal.
And the Euro scene is still single dominated.
WRT changing music industry business models, take a look back some 60 years:
In 1942, Capitol Records was formed. Within ten years, they were the dominant record label worldwide (with Sinatra and many other luminaries on their roster). One way they achieved this: they realized that radio wasn't the enemy. Until Capitol, record execs refused to license their records for radio play and routinely sued disc jockeys. Capitol realized that DJ's were free publicity, not a threat to album sales. So they negotiated extremely fair terms with disc jockeys and the rest is history.
Replace radio/DJ's with modern counterparts, and it makes you think, doesn't it?
No, actually, fuck *you*.
What if the guy down the street giving away the popsicles had STOLEN THEM from the guy selling them for 25 cents!?! Still interested? I would hope not.
MP3.com gets their music with *consent*, and still gives it away for free. You don't have to buy their premium service to get the free tunes, you just have to put up with ads. MP3.com is entitled to whatever they make in this business, as they aren't STEALING anything from artists *cough*Morpheus*cough*, and they're providing a valuable service, ie: storage space, organization, search utilities, and how about that giant monthly bandwidth bill?
On the other hand, if Free-Uber-Alles is really your mantra, expect to see me at your house tonight with a flashlight and a few garbage bags. I figure, why should I BUY anything, when I can just raid your house for it? I mean, it's the *obvious* decision, right?
The Free desktop that Just Works
you'll never pay for music you listen to again?
i'm really frustrated with the way the web is going.
sometimes i think the federal government should just take it over and say "fuck it, it's a free national infrastructure for everyone -- register here, put your content here, the hell with it".
for example, the large city libraries could become information nodes, a server farm on one end, access at the other, and high bandwidth to the local cable or telco infrastructure.
i hate to put it this way, but the riaa and mpaa are abberations that steal our freedoms. we, as primates, are natually inquisitive and expressive, in both an auditory and visual sense. for industries to claim they have an inherent right to profit from either side is simply a localized abberation in time against human rights.
visual and auditory products are so easily replicated, and it's such a fine line between parody and duplication, that individual rights (or perhaps individual activites) will, at some point, destroy the visual and auditory monopolies. i firmly beleive stardom, famous actors, and guitar gods will become a thing of the past at some point.
if you have a tangible, physical product, you make money on markup. if you have audio or visual entertainment, you make money on advertising. the powers-that-be may not like it, but they are so screwed, i don't see how they can win in the long run.
simply put, i buy three or four magazine subscriptions. they cost me about $120 a year. i'm not going to "subscribe" to web sites. not gonna happen...at least not yet. the closest thing i've seen to something i'd pay for is yahoo. they have pretty good news, quality personals, lots of informative links. if they had audio and visual, and said they need subscribers to stay alive, i'd pay for them.
same for google. i'd be pretty adamant about a "one-stop" portal, maybe $36 a year, with access to a wide variety of services.
after 25 years of modems you have to question whether the private sector is (in any way) up to the task. federal control of bandwidth and storage could go a long way toward moving the web forward.
my favorite area of mp3.com is :
comedy and satire
...some of the music areas are cool, but a lot of it is real crap.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Great; I'll have free access to this, too, from all the idiots who keep getting their domain name wrong when they sign up, sending their passwords to me.
For those of you who might have done this, your password has been changed to "asshole", your email address has been changed to "postmaster@mp3.com", and your preferences have been set to remove you from all mailings. Have a nice day.
If you're a service that wants to go 'legit' by asking me to help line these people's pockets, so that they can afford more of this and that, you can blow it out your ass.
2.99 a year? How much money are they paying for their bandwidth?
When I was younger ( about 7 months ago) I would spool 20 gig of MP3's a day from the nntp.
I know that wasn't cheep for the ISP to offer and I can only emagin how much its going to cost them. Can some one explain how they can do this that cheep and still pay any form of royalties?
Ascii artist &
This is a great idea. I would gladly do this. Have the low quality streaming(64kbps?) tracks available for free on the artist's page, and then allow members to download the 1440kbps .WAV version of the song for like 1$ each. That would be a great music site. You could have like a $5 annual membership fee and a free trial period. Of course a 3 minute song would be about 30MB or maybe 16MB if it was losslessly compressed with, say, Monkeys Audio or FLAC. Probably not practical for people with dial ups, but there are probably enough broadband users to make it profitable. I, for one, will never pay for lossy compressed garbage.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
It would be nice to have different ranges too- maybe 64K to demo the song
Reminds me of MP3.com's 32 kbps lo-fi stream and 128 kbps download.
and 320K if you actually want it.
You don't really need 320 kbps for CD quality. Recent versions of LAME have a --r3mix switch that allows CD quality (i.e. transparent reproduction of 0-20 kHz stereo audio) at an average rate of 180 to 200 kbps; read the "quality" section of r3mix.net for details.
Will I retire or break 10K?
For people that pay the extra $$$, make available 160-256 VBR Ogg files
Pointless. Decoding the 128 kbps MP3 songs that artists upload and re-encoding them as 160-256 kbps OGG will only further degrade the sound quality.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Well, advertising doesn't generate enough revenue. Subscriptions only work for very specific audiences. (Porn and financial data, mostly. I make no inferences.) Now we hear nonsense about squeezing more money out of ISPs -- a totally destructive proposal which is (fortunately) unimplementable.
So what does it take for content providers to give micropayment a try?
The Popsicle analogy is a lousy one.
A better analogy would be if there is a free popsicle vendor - but you never know what you are getting. The popsicle could actually be a rat-on-a-stick or even not a popsicle entirely.
Even if you get a popsicle you want it could be really low quality (96kbps anyone ?) or it could be incomplete or have sand in for no good reason.
People will pay for convenience of easy to download albums. I will and I am the tightest mo-fo out there. I am so sick of having to click 10'000 times and to weed out low quality MP3s for my collection.
Please Mr businessman let me spend my money
Please
Please
I wanted a funny
Cool! dont pay for the full year!!! hehe!
Lotas T Smartman www.lotas-smartman.net
I don't mind the fee. They do have phat bandwidth, and as such, their service is fairly reliable.
However, I only will pay this fee if:
The bands get a cut of the action. They're the ones making the music and giving it away. If MP3.com recieves a penny more than operating expenses + a little for a rainy day, then screw them. If MP3.com charges, the bulk of that money better go the the artists that spent their hard earned dough to write and record it.
They respect my privacy. I should need no more than authentication and authorization to get in. I am more than willing to put up a pot o' gold on paypal for pay sites to deduct from, so I don't have to give that pay site my personal info. Anybody interested in making such a "pot o gold" payment protocol with me should email me. I will GPL it if interested.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
>>Replace radio/DJ's with modern counterparts, ??>>and it makes you think, doesn't it?
Except that back then it wasn't possible to take the song you just heard off of the radio and convert it into a well mastered vinyle.
CD burners are cheap. A well encoded MP3 is equal to the cd version, or at least good enough to make the cheapskates not mind the difference.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Well fuck you. Hmm Let me think of an example. Oh, I got one, remember Napster, free as the sun, with millions of users? Remember what happened when the wanted to charge money. Bye-bye napster. Get real, people will go for the free candy buddy.
- phranck@nycap.rr.com
Don't eat shrimp candy, just a heads up.
This isn't really directly related to the topic here, but I'd like to address a number of points made in other comments here. It does bear on the topic of the news post, as you'll see. Also, please be aware that I'm not trying to promote either my company nor mp3.com in this post -- I'm just trying to clarify some of the facts about internet advertising, and how those facts impact mp3.com's business.
/. us), and yes, we are an ad network, reselling the advertising inventory of our partners. One of those partners is mp3.com. I originally got involved in AdAce because I, like most of you, was (and am) pissed off about the privacy violations running rampant through the internet advertising industry. I hoped (and still do) to show, by example, that an ad network can be successful without screwing with the viewers of the ads. And I am having some success.
/any/ user who comes in to that artist's area can browse around without worrying about ads. And no, unfortunately, I don't have a list of the artists who've done this.
A bit of background first. I'm CSO/CTO of AdAce, Inc. (please dont
Anyway, to the points:
** Advertising revenue and blocking proxies
Advertising is sold three ways: by impressions (showing the ad), by clicks (someone clicking on an ad banner), and by "acquisition" (someone registering or making a purchase on the advertiser's website, after having clicked on the banner). If you use an ad-filtering proxy, then you definately reduce the revenues from clicks and from acquisitions (obviously). But you might not be reducing the revenues from impressions; it all depends on whether the proxy blocks the ad banner request or the response. If the proxy blocks the initial request, then there is no impression, and no revenue. If it blocks the response, then as far as the ad serving software can tell, an impression was delivered -- the fact that no one actually saw the ad can't be detected by the server.
The overwhelming majority of ad sales online are CPM (impression based). CPC (click based) is common, but not huge. And CPA (acquisition based) is highly disliked by the ad networks, because it means that either the ad network has to duplicate the advertiser's entire website, or the advertiser has a financial incentive to lie to us about their true number of acquisitions.
That aside, we at AdAce really don't mind if you choose to use an ad blocking proxy. And that's true for the advertisers and ad hosts as well: most sites, mp3.com included, have more inventory (read: browser requests for webpages that have one or more slots for ads) than they actually manage to sell. So those ad impressions that are lost by your use of a proxy don't affect our profits at all; we'll still have many more opportunities to deliver the ad before the end of the ad campaign.
Besides, if you chose to use an ad blocking proxy, then you're the kind of person who's very unlikely to click on an ad in the first place, and that's what the advertiser wants: clicks. So if we showed you an ad, you'd be very unlikely to click on it, and the only result would be that we'd spend money on the bandwidth without the advertiser getting any benefit.
So by using an ad blocking proxy, you actually let mp3.com earn more money. Ad hosts charge based on an average CTR (click through ratio). The more often their ads generate clicks, the more money they can charge the next advertiser. If you're unlikely to click on an ad, and you use an ad blocking proxy, then you're effectively raising their CTR by removing yourself from the pool of impressions. And a higher CTR means that they can charge their advertisers more.
Even if it weren't for all these practical and financial reasons, we still wouldn't mind about your use of an ad blocking proxy. It's your machine, and you're choosing to browse the way that you want to. We have no political, philosophical, or legal right to force you to view our ads. If you don't want to see them, then by all means, use an ad blocking proxy. Advertising is all about public response, and if your response is to get pissed at our ads, then we don't want to show them to you: the last thing that we want is a pissed off viewer. It's your browsing experience that matters to you, and we don't (nor should we) have any say in that.
** Popup ads
I, too, am highly annoyed with popup ads. They piss me off just as much as spam does. In fact, I run a popup blocker on my personal computer to prevent them. It's got problems, admittedly, but it succeeds in blocking all the popups that come to me (it just blocks a little more than I want).
Unfortunately, turning off javascript really doesn't prevent all popups. Most browsers support HTML variants that allow a link to open a new browser window (target="_new" in an <A> or <IMG> link). It'd be nice to see more web browsers that ignored these tag options, or allowed filtering on a site by site basis.
** MP3.com's advertising and ad free services
We've been doing business with MP3.com for some time now, and we've ridden out their hard weather with them. I've developed a bunch of contacts within MP3.com, and all these guys are quite cool. Even their evil marketroids are cool (as far as marketroids go).
I like these guys a lot, and I'd love to see them get out of their tough times. They've been hit by a lot of hardship over the years from outside sources and from bad internal decisions. But the greatest thing about MP3.com is that they listen to their users. If you've got a problem with something they're doing, or if you have suggestions for ways that they can improve their service, then don't hesitate to email them. Don't flame them incoherently, but if you can rationally express your outrage, then they're likely to pay attention. You don't even have to use formal English: these guys are mostly musicians, and tend to be pretty relaxed.
There are a lot of ways to avoid advertisements on MP3.com's service. The news post mentioned one way. Ad blocking proxies are another. Apparently they also allow artists to pay a small monthly fee (something like $5/month, I'm not too clear on it), so that those artists can have ad-free areas on MP3.com's service. So
However, not all ads on MP3.com are obnoxious or irrelevant. Sure, they've got those omnipresent Heineken ads this month, and for some reason they're running a Janet Jackson in Paris ad (as if someone coming to a website will choose to fly off to Paris just because of an ad banner). But they also have advertisements from other artists on MP3.com.
We've been running a service for MP3.com that allows artists to advertise for themselves right there, at very low rates. All throughout the music browsing sections of MP3.com, you can find these artist ads mingled in with the normal advertisements. In a month where there are more artist ad purchases, you'll naturally see more of those ads. It's all a question of what portion of the inventory is going to artist purchases from one week to another.
-- Nolite audere delere orbiculum rigidum meum.
Subscribe to get an "ad-free premium experience"? Huh? What am I missing...
Can't I just use WebWasher or config my firewall to filter out the junk? I already give them a totallybogusemailthatsnoneofyour@business.com for an email and then delete their stupid cookies when I download stuff... Plus I live in Zimbabwe, make $100,000 a year, and bag groceries. Even more, I'm female with 27 children between the ages of 1 and 5...
Forget these subscriptions - for the plain and simple reason that they don't benefit me all the time. Some months it may be a good deal where I download 50GB, some months I may not download anything - do I get my $$$ back for those months?
What about when I go out of town and forget about this? Do I still pay for something I'm not using?
Forget this "premium" crapola, just let me download a song for $0.25, make it a high bit rate, and DON'T EVER pester me with any advertisements...
I love their service! I would happily trade a latte per month for their continued survival! I listen to them DAILY...
Seriously, guys! This is one of the largeest available archives of international, cultural music... anywhere.
They want less per month than a beer at the local pub. Give it to 'em! I urge my friends to do the same...
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
People go for the "free candy" because there is no option to purchase it. I would buy "official" MP3s in a microsecond rather than stealing them if the record companies would give me the option to, and if it was a reasonable price.
Try [echo "127.0.0.1 grfx.mp3.com" >> /etc/hosts], and you can cruise mp3.com without 90% of the ads. Why would somebody pay monthly for that?
The objections to the P4P plan are silly. If you don't make more than $20 per month, YOU DON'T HAVE TO SIGN UP FOR IT! In other words, it's not just a simple redistribution scheme. The money for P4P comes out of a flat amount (originally $1M per month, if I recall correctly).
.sig!
If you aren't signed up for P4P, you can still track how much P4P you would have made if you were signed up for it. This way, you can spend several months building up traffic to your MP3.com page, getting people to click on it and check it regularly, until you're sure you can make that much.
I signed up for the $20/month "Premium Artist Service" as soon as they started it, and I have yet to have a month where I didn't net a profit...
...and I've done nothing more than put my URL in my Slashdot
Imagine how much money I'd make if I actually marketed my music?
It's the federal government that is stealing your freedoms. It's being asked to do so by the RIAA and MPAA, but it's nonetheless it that is doing it.
If it took over the web things would be so much worse, you
The technical issue you describe isn't really the limitation (the payment mechanism needn't be built into the player). What is the limitation is the lack of digital rights management in the current media players. That will be resolved in the next couple of months, when Real starts rolling out en-masse the new version of Real player. The player supports digital rights management, where a content provider can provide exactly the service you describe. The player keeps track of the purchased licenses. There's obviously more to it but I can't really talk about it.
maru
www.mp3.com/pixal
Have you looked at RealPlayer recently?
What began as some neat streaming technology has been turned into one of the ugliest, most bloated pieces of 'adware'/'spamware' around
Even after opting out of several screenfuls of shite, it still goes and installs its and plasters it's shortcut icon all over your system...
And it has a nasty load-on-startup launcher thing - it's all the crap like this that helps maintain the slowness of an average Windows install...
Really? One of us has really bad taste. Please post some links to some good music on MP3.com. I usually use MP3.com as my example as to why "free music" doesn't work. Everytime I check out the top 10 or top 20 it's all complete and utter crap.
I'd be happy to be wrong.
Sorry Buddy, But Stealing != Copying!!!
- PS. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R where eliminated.
Excess bandwidth costs for many users in Australia are around 20c/mb. So in addition to subscription costs, some people are paying an extra $1/5mb track. It's hardly something to get excited about.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Digital Rights Management? Sounds rather stark. I've already been avoiding Real content on the 'net for over six months out of simple dislike for their nasty player and nasty spamming. Quicktime will go next. Both are nasty pieces of shit in their current incarnations and additions of things like DRM will only make them more offensive.
http://www.killradio.com
Perhaps I didn't make this completely clear, but the payments would not be required at all. The stream is free, the high-quality songs would be paid for.