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Review of pressplay and RealOne
c64guy writes: "Okay, so we all know that the music labels launched their own digital music subscription services, and that the new for-pay Napster should be debuting any minute. Here's a particularly in-depth review that compares the nitty-gritty of the services. For example, with RealOne, you can only ever have 200 tracks activated on your system. Even if you've been subscribed for eight months and downloaded 1600 tracks, you can still only listen to 200 of them in one month."
I cant understand RIAA's problem. These record labels are crying like spoilt brats. Who hasnt seen slump. Slump is everywhere, and what do they really expect, to be immune. To me the picture looks a weird, and I certainly feel that this will stifle bands which prefer to stream online rather than go to record labels, and currently many are doing that. On the internet there are lots of bands, real good ones too who prefer to use independent radio stations, if the record labels get in there and do some muscle flexing, they can very well kill independent radio! and its not just jurisdictions they are getting, but now they wanna come in from both sides. But you cant have your cake and eat it too. People will find a way to workaround real one and all the BS. One major crack, and a few thouosand songs get stolen adn put on some russian and chinese server, these guys will learn a lesson As for limiting the number of songs, i wonder who are these guys to decide how many songs i wanna listen to. Man i got my rights, if i wanna spend more and buy more i will, this rule wont really stand in court if you got good lawers backing you!
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"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
You can say goodbye to these schemes now, as they have no chance of suceeding.
You say that like its news to the record labels. Six months after debut, when the total subscriptions is barly pushing three digits, they'll shut the service down and say "See no one wants to pay for their music downloads. The only reason Napster and the like were popular is that they were free. Those evil, hacking, napster-loving, commerce-hating, artist-robbing, economy-destroying, pirates must be stopped" These horrible music subscription scemes were never intended to succeed, only to be a token foray into the world of music downloads. Listening to music on a computer is only about robbing people, or so we'll be told.
Let's wait about a year and check these numbers again. Real will be lucky if they can keep 100,000 people who are willing to pay for this lame-ass service. But, the thing that scares me about Real is the deals they are signing with Mobile phone manufacturers. In the future will I be forced to buy a Nokia phone with "RealOne" on it? What if I don't want this software installed on my phone? Can I uninstall it? Be afraid.... be very afraid.
I'd like to find independent, non-RIAA music. Preferably, I'd like to pay the artists directly, although I don't mind buying the music from a non-RIAA organization.
Can anybody recommend any good sites or search tips?
If enough people are expressing their desire to have nothing to do with the RIAA directly to the RIAA (i.e. email them...) then they cannot call for Gov't support when they fail. "We had no idea people would hate that we tried to take their rights away!".
They can blame MP3's for the bad economy last year if they want, but they'll have a hard time blaming people for saying 'your service sucks, we're off to find somebody else.'
"Derp de derp."
You know, even if you could get your music out, how the heck are you supposed to know who's on which label? Am I supposed to go out and research all the artists I want to download online, figure out who their label is, and figure out which service supports that label? Are you kidding?!? By the time that's done, its easier to go to the store and buy the damn disc.
If the labels could get around the anti-trust issues of merging their services into one major service - or if they could share artists across services - then consumers might give a damn. Until then, I'm stuck trying to figure out who Yanni signed with...
It may be cold, but at least it's clear.
Forget about these crippled proprietary format, special music player, spying-on-your-ass major label suckfests.
Go to emusic.com.. $16.99 / month subscription, you sign in and download real, honest to god MP3s, as many as you like, as many times as you like. Do what you want with them. They're MP-freakin-3s.
You won't find Britney Spears or NSync, sorry. But they have a remarkable number of small and indie labels signed on, a huge variety of stuff from oldies to punk, country, jazz, classical. If you're willing to step out of the mainstream try this. I download about 10 full CDs every month.
What if the none of the creators of these services are interested in the services working?
It is very plausible they plan to keep these sites running with the current set of ridiciulous limitations (200 songs, lose everything when subscription ends, etc.); have them fail and then go cry to the legislature that digital distribution on the internet is impossible and should be made illegal - after all, if they can't make it happen why should anyone else be allowed?
Or they could settle for having the image of having "tried" digital distribution and "proven" that it doesn't work...
The issue is that from their own perspective these companies have nothing to lose and everything to gain by the failure of their digital distribution ventures.