Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Rent Music Over the Net

Posted by michael on from the none-of-this-rent-to-own-stuff-either dept.

NerveGas writes: "Financial Times is reporting that two competing services, both backed by major music labels, are about to offer legal music downloads. For $9.95 per month, you can download up to 100 songs per month. The catch? Cancel your service, and you lose the ability to hear *any* of the songs that you've downloaded. There are other caveats, as well - but at least it's a start." So what happens after you've got your hard drive filled with rented music and the monthly fee goes up to $199.95/month? Pay up, or lose it all...

12 of 381 comments (clear)

  1. Bah by jdc180 · · Score: 4, Informative

    One or two record lables offering this kind of service doesn't interest me one bit. Until it becomes possible to get ANY song on this type of service, no matter how cheap, I'll continue to use my free p2p client of choice.

  2. Why rent when you can buy? by samael · · Score: 5, Informative

    www.emusic.com will allow you to download perfectly ordinary MP3 files for $10 a month. you can then do what you like with them.

    If you support them, they'll grow and grow...

    --
    My Journal
    1. Re:Why rent when you can buy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      It says it somewhere on there (looked for it awhile back) -- it's 128Kb.

    2. Re:Why rent when you can buy? by dgoodman · · Score: 2, Informative
      Though a big fan of Astralwerks, I've given up buying their stuff...because they too are an RIAA member. check it: here.
      sad, really. I'm having the hardest time finding good labels with no ties to the RIAA (at least they publish a member list, though).


      have fun
      dongoodman

  3. Many restrictions by ancarett · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wired news has also run this story with some more details about some of the services (and restrictions):

    RealOne Music consumers will be prevented from moving their music from a PC to a portable MP3 player because of digital rights management technology attached to the files.

    There is a limit of 100 downloads and 100 streams per month from the Warner Music, EMI, and BMG catalogs as well.

    --
    ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
  4. I wonder what this does... by tjwhaynes · · Score: 5, Informative
    Hmmm. Lets see...


    cat /proc/asound/card1/pcmloopD0S0p > ! /tmp/output.raw

    Now play that funky music and...

    oggenc --raw /tmp/output.raw > song.ogg

    Wow. Making a copy of this music is gonna be reaaaaallly difficult.

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

    --
    Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
  5. Secure Audio Path by yerricde · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sound blaster live cards (and probably many others) have the ability to record anything that plays through the soundcard to a wav file.

    In order for Windows to consider a sound card when an application opens a Secure Audio Path, it has to have a driver signed by Microsoft, and that driver must turn off all cleartext digital outputs (waveout->wavein, ->file, ->spdif, etc.) while the Secure Audio Path is open. (Read More...)

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  6. Doesn't work with the Secure Audio Path by yerricde · · Score: 2, Informative

    Pipe the songs through the virtual audio cable

    Windows ME and Windows XP have a Secure Audio Path that disables all of a sound card's digital outputs or the driver doesn't get signed. No pipe for you, sorry.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  7. The catch by richieb · · Score: 4, Informative
    The catch is that the music they have there is not the top fourty really popular stuff, but more off-beat, less well know things.

    However, they do have lots of really good stuff. For example most of the recordings of Bill Evans, lost of albums by Elvis Costello, all records of my favorite guitaris Emily Remler, lost of good blues (i.e. all recordings of Lightin' Hopkings, latest album by Sue Foley, Albert King, Hot Tuna).

    Also all files are encoded at 128 bits. Finally, to get the $10/month rate you've got to sign up for a year.

    I've used the service for few months now and I must have downloaded about 30 CDs of stuff.

    --
    ...richie - It is a good day to code.
  8. Damn. There goes my secret by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I was hoping that the VAC2 would not have been blurbed about in such a high-profile site like Slashdot. Watch it magically disappear as the DMCA thugs-lawyers will muscle them in court, calling it a circumvention device.

  9. Compulsory license by yerricde · · Score: 2, Informative

    grossly overpriced CD that the actual artist MAYBE gets $0.10 from the sale of

    The songwriter, on the other hand, makes a full 75 cents from each record sold, which she splits evenly with the music publisher. Moral: to get rich in the record industry, write your own songs.

    ANYONE offering any type of music downloads will eventually get shut down, especially places like emusic that allow you to just download an MP3

    The United States has a "compulsory license" scheme (see 17 USC 115) for sound recordings such that the copying party pays the label a set royalty for each phonorecord (i.e. copy) or digital delivery made, and the label can't veto it.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  10. What have you been smoking? by cowtamer · · Score: 2, Informative

    The _only_ reason I use p2p clients is to find obscure music. If you're stuck with something like GnuTella (decent idea, but slow searches), try an OpenNap client (like winMX) ....