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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."
What's the point in only being able to listen to 200? How many albums is that? I know that I listen to alot more music than that that I buy on a CD. Why not just limit it to say 1 song / month = set rate. That way the more I pay the more I can listen to... with no limit on the total # of songs. I don't see this helping their pay service very much
I was not impressed with their selection. They had spotty atrist coverage and some artists had only half of their tracks available. My biggest two beefs:
1) You lost all your downloaded music when you cancel (you can keep burnt music obviously.)
2) All your music is stuck inside of pressplay. No mp3 player support.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
The real tragedy in all of this is that the music studios are going to release these crappy, restricted music download services for probably the next year or so. No one's going to use them because of the extra rules they impose (like the 200 track max - who wants their music collection limited to twenty CDs?) and their proprietary formats that won't go onto a CD or mp3 portable. They'll fail like Circuit City's DivX did, not because there's anything wrong with the concept, people just won't want to deal with the hassle of managing when their songs "expire" or which one they have to delete to make room for the new N'Sync single.
The record labels are then going to go to Congress and say "Look, we tried letting these people download music, but the thieves won't use them. We have to have draconian legislation and internet police in order to keep our disgustingly fat and corrupt industry alive!". Congress will examine their campaign funds, find a way to slip RIAA money past McCain-Feingold, and pass the law.
I bet they've got this entire plan in an MS Project file at RIAA headquarters.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
Actually, for-pay services have a chance (at least to get my money) for two reasons:
1) Guaranteed quality. I don't have time to check every mp3 I download to make sure that it was ripped by someone intelligent enough to do it correctly.
2) Easy browsing. I want to _really_ be able to search by artist, song title, year, etc. And when I search by song and find the song that I want, I want to be one click away from finding other songs that that band produced.
3) I just realized that I don't need to own the music. I'd be perfectly happy renting music, so long as I can rent as much as I want, and do so easily and affordably.
Because I can't get 1 or 2 with normal P2P filesharing, I don't use them anymore. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like any of the current offerings from the record labels are meeting my requirements for 3, so they won't work either.
By the way, anyone know where I can find any music downloading program (for Linux) that will meet all of these requirements? It doesn't have to be mainstream music.
I don't think the RIAA is stupid enough to think there is a market for their "product" now.
But they are attempting to create a market through legislation.
And, who knows, if they can buy the US and make the US stronarm the rest of the world then this might actually work. A small step for their bottom line, and a huge leap backwards for mankind, artists and audience alike.
The "copyright industry" is quickly becoming obsolete, they are turning into useless middle men that doesn't provide any value to customers or artists. They can only continue existing in their current form through legislation.
I have no problem with supporting the artists, but I'll be damned if I let the middle men get their hands on my money. I completely stopped buying retail CD's a year ago. Nowdays I only buy second hand or directly from the artists, and if I can't do that, then I'll rather pirate than support these dinosaurs.
Obsolete bussines models are supposed to die. Darwin's laws should apply to businesses to, especially businesses.
Lets all give them a little push on the way.
I am doing my part, are you?
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
If the target market is the people who listen to top 40 radio, then they only need about 50 active songs at a time - after all normal commercial radio programs those 50 songs and rotates the crap out of them. The corporation that owns the radio station says you only need to hear 50 songs, that's all you need to hear. The corporation that owns the music says you only need to hear 200 songs, then that's all you need to hear.
It reminds me of a commercial from the mid 80s. It was supposed to be a Soviet fashon show - a stocky older woman walked up and down a catwalk wearing the same overalls while a Russian-accented announcer said "Is Eveningwear", "Is Swim Wear" and so on. The point was that in the "Free World" we have many choices, while in the "Communist World" you get what the oligarchy offers you. So we beat the awful Communists, now the corporate oligarchy offers us a choice of 40 movies and 200 songs. Hurray! Victory!