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Students Skip College Music Services
WSJdpatton writes "College students don't turn down much that's free. But when it comes to online music, even free hasn't been enough to persuade many students to use the digital download services colleges and universities are providing." I know that the Ctrax service offered by my current school — Temple University — and many others (it's "available to all college students with a '.edu' email address") has an ugly, awkward interface. Worse, the free (gratis) part is an expiring, "tethered" collection of music for those who use it; downloads to keep are fee-per-track.
No, believe me. CTrax is an absolute piece of crap. Last time I used it I could only access it via internet explorer, and if you queued up more than one song (even just two) to download rather than picking one at a time it would slow the interface down to absolute crap.
I actually interviewed to work with them and used the opportunity to basically tell them why their product sucked and why nobody was using it rather than to try to obtain a job. It ended as such and I wonder to this day if they've improved at all because I refuse to even visit the service. All of my friends have stayed away from it as well for this reason.
In any case, if I'm offered a "legal" means to download the song then why can't I simply obtain that song via different means that may be faster (such as the DC++ network we had running at Purdue for a while, or via torrents)? It makes NO sense to me to say I can get the song one way but not another, even if the only difference is the DRM that is thrown and blown all over the song. (I could, after all, just use it myself for personal use and not burn it; which is exactly what I did with them).
Free translates for me as: you get what you pay for.