Kazaa To Return As a Legal Subscription Service

suraj.sun sends in this excerpt from CNet: "One of the most recognizable brands in the history of illegal downloading is due to officially resurface, perhaps as early as next week, sources close to the company told CNET News. Only this time the name Kazaa will be part of a legal music service. Altnet and parent company Brilliant Digital Entertainment attached the Kazaa brand to a subscription service that will offer songs and ringtones from all four of the major recording companies. For the past few months, a beta version has been available. The company tried recently to ratchet up expectations with a series of vague, and what some considered misguided, press releases. The site will open with over 1 million tracks." The NYTimes has a related story about how the music industry is trying to convert casual pirates by offering more convenient new services.

Comments

Subject

[Legion303]

Kazaa sucked even when it was a vehicle for illegal downloads. I can't see the music industry (motto: "fuck the pirates, fuck the artists, and fuck YOU") improving it at all.

It'll never work

[jrothwell97]

"One of the most recognizable brands in the history of illegal downloading is due to officially resurface, perhaps as early as next week, sources close to the company told CNET News. Only this time the name Kazaa will be part of a legal music service. Altnet and parent company Brilliant Digital Entertainment attached the Kazaa brand to a subscription service that will offer songs and ringtones from all four of the major recording companies. For the past few months, a beta version has been available. The company tried recently to ratchet up expectations with a series of vague, and what some considered misguided, press releases. The site will open with over 1 million tracks."

It's failed already. You have to pay money every month to listen to music you don't own. This is why subscription-based services have never worked - iTunes and Amazon offer (and have offered for a while), for a much more reasonable price, music that you get to keep forever, and, since the abolition of DRM, can do anything you want (within the law, of course *nudge nudge wink wink*) with.

It didn't work for the Zune, it didn't work for Wippit, it's not working for Napster, it's not going to work for the relaunched Kazaa.

Re:No DRM

[rampant mac]

"It's possible. "Extremely cheap, convenient, and worry-free" can beat "Free, hard to find, and worried-about-malware-and-getting-sued"."

That's, I think, exactly the reason iTunes is the juggernaut that it is... Quality: Good Enough to the ears of mere mortals. Cheap: People arguing over the price of iTunes music while sipping on a $7 Sapporo? Awesome. Worry free: Is there a remote vector to inject a virus/trojan? Possibly. It'd be damn hard though. I'm more worried about Apple releasing a version of iTunes that's buggy as hell and messes up my music library that I've spent years building. That's why I keep backups though! ;)