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Kazaa To Return As a Legal Subscription Service

Posted by Soulskill on from the if-it's-good-enough-for-the-pirate-bay dept.

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.

15 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. No DRM by corsec67 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How about if they try to offer something better than the pirates?

    No DRM, region locking/restrictions, convenience, etc.

    --
    If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
    1. Re:No DRM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A lower price isn't the only way to compete. "Better" is not the same as "cheaper".

    2. Re:No DRM by nine-times · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    3. Re:No DRM by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You can beat free with convenience and accessibility.

      Take the Linux of, say, 2000 and compare it to Windows 2000. The former was free. The latter was more popular. Yes, because it was bundled and people were duped into thinking Windows is the be-all end-all, but there's more to it. I know a few people who tried Linux and found it complicated, they switched back to Windows. It might be different today (Ubuntu is in some areas way more convenient than Windows), but with the half-assed installers of early days, a lot of manual configuration (with command line!) and stuff that doesn't "just work", people dropped free for convenient.

      The same can work for content. To beat free, you have to be easier to use and more convenient than free. Apple and iTunes went that way, and with some success. It's easy and hassle free to buy in that store, it's well organized and it offers what people want, with reliable quality. Compared to the free alternative, it's more convenient (no need to configure anything in your firewall, no need to find trackers or peers...), it's better organized (no need to ponder how it might have been named, no sifting through "insider" taggings) and more reliable in the quality of your product (you get that song. Not a (deliberately or accidently) mislabeled one, not in some shoddy, useless quality).

      The only way to compete with 'free' is to offer more. People are willing to pay for convenience. The problem is that they get less with the current system of crippling DRM. The free stuff is, well, first of all free AND also more convenient to use because it does work on every player, any time you want, and without that sword of damocles hanging over your head, i.e. that the organisation offering it might close the shop and you're sitting there with data junk.

      Nothing beats free AND more convenient/reliable, that's a given.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    4. Re:No DRM by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Better" is not the same as "cheaper".

      True, but seems to be equivalent for an astonishing number of people. I dare say, most people.

    5. Re:No DRM by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Last time I checked Amazon is doing fine despite the recession. What's your argument?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  2. Why do they even bother? by Renderer+of+Evil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Even the biggest brand out there, Napster, failed to capture any of its former glory as a pay service despite the ad blitz and continued media coverage.

    It's like shutting down a brothel and replacing it with a legitimate massage parlor. Would you fly out to Reno, Nevada to get a deep tissue massage at the retooled Bunny Ranch? These are kinds of questions these execs are not asking.

    1. Re:Why do they even bother? by booyabazooka · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not every business enterprise has to be glorious. Napster piggybacked off of an existing brand, and it was probably at least a decent move for them.

      They seem to be doing okay. Just a few wikipedia quotes, take them or leave them...

      On April 3, 2007 Napster reported it had over 830,000 paid subscribers.

      September 15, 2008 - Napster is purchased by Best Buy for $121 million.

      So what if Kazaa-pay is not as nearly big as Kazaa-free was? If you're going to have a pay music service, it's still probably beneficial to call it Kazaa, just to have some name recognition.

    2. Re:Why do they even bother? by booyabazooka · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You forget that even the most ignorant of computer users recognizes that software becomes obsolete. If anything, it'll keep people away because they are going to think of it as an old program among a bunch of new, more up-to-date ones.

      Right, that's why no one trusts "Windows", "Office", "Internet Explorer", "Photoshop"... all of these shitty obsolete brands. Ignorant computer users are racing toward Ubuntu and OpenOffice because they're never heard of them, so they must be good!

    3. Re:Why do they even bother? by Voyager529 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Napster has three different models: buying a la carte tracks (which are in 256kbps DRM-Free MP3 files; pricing mirrors Napster), streaming subscriptions (monthly, quarterly, and annually; each also including MP3 download credits as well), and Napster-To-Go (which uses the WMA-DRM you reference).

      Two big things I think can be attributed to Napster's failure to make a significant dent in the market. The first is the iPod; I'm sure that most of us have friends who aren't aware that there are players beyond the iPod. Apple's bundling of a store with the player management software put it right in front of the target demographic, while Napster must be sought after. I'm not trying to start an anti-trust pissing match here, but the bottom line is that the majority of consumers aren't going to seek after an alternative solely on principle when a store is already available and integrated. The second is related: Choosing a DRM scheme that makes you the premiere music retailer to 10-20% of the MP3 player market pretty much relegated it to niche status to begin with...then making that DRM scheme the foundation of a Super Bowl ad campaign basically gave Napster the mindshare of being the incompatible iTunes wannabe.

      On a general note, subscription-based music downloads is one of the few places where I think that DRM has a place. If you're renting downloads, there must be some way of 'getting them back' if the user opts to unsubscribe. By its very nature, a subscription does not transfer ownership to the user, and I don't have a problem with that being enforced in such a context.

      If Napster had such an issue going legit, Kazaa is going to find an even steeper uphill battle. One of Napster's greatest strengths was that it exclusively transferred music files; swapping malware was quite the challenge when the only files that could be transferred were WAV and MP3. Kazaa installed adware to begin with; I personally credit Kazaa as being one of the apps to bring adware/spyware/malware into the public consciousness. It became such a problem that I knew plenty of people who had moved to other apps (including limewire) before Kazaa was shut down. Kazaa had a stigma around it when it was free; getting people to use a now-legal service still associated with ruining their computers when iTunes, Amazon, and Napster are already established and doing relatively well...let's just say that I don't see any smart venture capitalist throwing money their way.

  3. cpt obv by v1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The NYTimes has a related story about how the music industry is trying to convert casual pirates by offering more convenient new services.

    orly? Millions of people find our existing service so detestable that they turn to an illegal service to get what they want. Maybe, just maybe, there's a market for what they're looking for? Maybe we can make more money by selling them what they want instead of suing them?

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
  4. Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death by six025 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's a reason why the Pirate Bay is successful and it is rarely mentioned. Apart from the content being free, and DRM free, the service offered is generally agnostic to brands, labels or formats. It is like Google for media - raw results for any media query. Until the worlds media companies can agree to build a centralised service that is effectively neutral, services like the Pirate Bay will continue to flourish. It will probably never happen though, because they're all too busy stepping over each other in the race for the prize, while at the same time believing that whatever service they dream up next will be better than everything that has gone before it.

  5. Sounds good, until you take a closer look by BorgDrone · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Although $20/month is a bit steep, I would consider this service were is not for a few limitations that make the service completely useless.

    1) Only available in the US. Really guys, it's time to start thinking globally, the rest of the internet has for the last 10 years.
    2) DRM, you don't really own the tracks, you can just play them for as long as you keep paying.
    3) Can't play it on an iPod/iPhone, or any (portable) media player

    If the music industry wants to get rid of piracy they have to start seeing them as competitors with a superior product. Since they cannot compete on price they have to compete on convenience and quality.

    1) Make it global
    2) Make sure EVERY song is there, not just the major labels
    3) Allow artists to upload directly to the service, offer them the possibility to cut out the middle man. Effectively: phase out all music labels, let them fade out into oblivion. Smart music labels could re-invent themselves as companies that sell services (studio time, marketing, etc.) to artists.
    4) No restrictions, no DRM, complete freedom.
    5) Make it affordable so Average Joe will not even consider going through the 'effort' of pirating music. Flat-fee is preferred (e.g. $9,99 /month would seem reasonable).

  6. Still fighting 1st gen by sakdoctor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    All the first generation file sharing programs/protocols sucked.
    Kazaa. Napster. I personally found Gnutella worst of all.

    But this is hilarious. The music industry are so slow, that up until now they have been fighting decade old technology. Now they are digging up the corpses and attempting a reanimation.
    When will they get around to fighting the completely decentralised and encrypted services bound together by nothing more than a loose collection of opensource tools?

    *Reclines in chair with large box of popcorn*

  7. Re:It'll never work by jrothwell97 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But you don't have to pay for Spotify.

    --
    Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.