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Students Skip College Music Services
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jul 06, 2006 10:16 AM
from the they-know-which-end-stinks dept.
from the they-know-which-end-stinks dept.
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.
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[+]
Your Rights Online: iPod Users Buy CDs, Shun iTunes 550 comments
twitter writes, "The BBC's summarizes a Jupiter Research study, 'iPod fans shunning iTunes store.' From the article: '83% of iPod owners do not buy digital music regularly... only 5% of the music on an iPod will be bought from online music stores. The rest will be from CDs the owner of an MP3 player already has or tracks they have downloaded from file-sharing sites... [T]he only salient characteristic shared by all owners of portable music players was that they were more likely to buy more music — especially CDs.' This is despite years of iTunes promotion and apparent success. Given the outright failure of other music services, it is clear that users prefer DRM-free music, and are willing to pay for it and take the trouble to rip it."
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Even crap isn't worth free (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Even crap isn't worth free (Score:2, Insightful)
The free manure many farms give away is probably rather popular with keen gardeners. I could have done with some recently...
Re:Even crap isn't worth free (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Even crap isn't worth free (Score:3, Funny)
Free software! (Score:5, Funny)
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It's your fault anyway (Score:5, Funny)
A) should quit whining and fix it yourself already, since you already have the source,
B) are an idiot (doubly so if what you needed is related in any way to user interface, reading existing files, etc). We should have mandatory IQ tests to prevent idiots like you from getting anywhere near a computer,
C) should RTFM already. In fact, you should write the RTFM, since it doesn't exist yet. Get to it already.
D) are an idiot
E) are a MS fanboy and/or paid to call their favourite program crap
F) are an idiot. Even by MS shill/fanboy/etc standards.
G) should stop doing anything that can't be done with their program. In fact, you should feel _proud_ to abandon any work you need done, or spend a few months learning command-line ways to do it, just to show the middle finger to MS.
H) are an idiot for needing that, or for doing it like that, in the first place
I) are only using a closed-source program instead because you've pirated it. We just know you did.
J) did we mention that you're an idiot yet?
K) all the above
L) like K, and you're an idiot too
Parent
Re:It's your fault anyway (Score:3)
Re:Even crap isn't worth free (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Even crap isn't worth free (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Even crap isn't worth free (Score:3, Informative)
Now, when the RIAA says 'this person stole $3000 worth of music' a good defence lawyer could argue 'my client copied $0 worth of material.' Of course, if someone pirated
Re:Even crap isn't worth free (Score:5, Insightful)
This is still the sort of thing colleges spend money on, instead of, oh, say, that long-overdue raise for faculty...
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Re:Even crap isn't worth free (Score:3, Informative)
Napster contra IPod (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Napster contra IPod (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Napster contra IPod (Score:2)
So you are right and I am wrong. Well played. Without a durable medium it is a little hard to steal things.
Re:Napster contra IPod (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know how I would do that, however...
Re:Napster contra IPod (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:+5 Insightful? Oh please... (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you steal a car? Would you steal a purse? Would you steal a cellphone? Then why would you steal a movie?
No, I wouldn't steal a car. But if I could magically make an exact duplicate of the car, leaving the original intact and available to it's owner, damn right I would copy it. Same for the cellphone, money, etc.
What will happen to copyright law when the Jetson's style cloning machine becomes reality?
Re:+5 Insightful? Oh please... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're being charged for a CD and the music's not being offered for free download on the band's web site in the format you desire, then that means that everyone involved with that production -- musicians, session musicians, recording engineers, graphic artists, marketers, etc., etc. -- put their time in to an effort that they knowingly expected would be sold.
If you disagree with that philos
Re:+5 Insightful? Oh please... (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of them are DEAD man-- I wish my heirs would get paid for the rest of time for the work I do every day.
I support a reasonable copyright period. The current copyright period is not reasonable.
Re:Napster contra IPod (Score:2)
Free? (Score:4, Interesting)
It may be free in that you don't have to directly pay Napster, but the money has to come from somewhere -- it's probably covered under the 'Student Activities Fee' or one of the other many fees that you get hit with each semester.
(yes, I'm cynical -- I'm both an alum, and an ex-ISS employee. I've seen how much GW wastes on bad IT implementation. Hell, I even reported Nabih Bedewi [gwhatchet.com] to the engineering school for misappropriation of equipment almost a decade ago.)
Parent
Re:Napster contra IPod (Score:2)
Trying to keep this somewhat on topic, does anyone else think that the availabilty of music on University intranets makes free service offers less attractive? People can download gigab
Re:Napster contra IPod (Score:2)
No thank you (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No thank you (Score:4, Funny)
"Its ease of use, speed, lack of viruses and spyware and affordable pricing are in line with what college students' seek today."
Z.
Parent
Re:No thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
I got so fed up with their stupid DRM that I even wrote a guide on how to get around it [slyengineer.com] using Audacity (clunky, but effective). Even with the ability to rip the tracks to mp3s using Audacity or similar, it just wasn't worth the hassle of their terrible interface in order to access their limited track selection. I remember at least a few letters in our school paper complaining about the service and what a waste of money it is (apparently some "anonymous donor" funded it.. ). It's too bad Apple are so stringent with their pricing, or they could work out great deals with Unis that people wouldn't hate so much. Maybe CDigix have cleaned up their act in the year or so since I've used their service, but I doubt it, and I don't see myself going back even though it is free.
Parent
TNSTAAFL (Score:3, Insightful)
Surprise surprise!
If most of the services charge for downloads you can keep, its hardly free is it? In either sense of the word.
Re:TNSTAAFL (Score:3, Informative)
I don't like keeping a large music collection at work and I don't want to carry my media player there either so I have recently been using Pandora [pandora.com] to stream music that I actually like to my work machine. It's not the best solution but it's better than the alternatives (i.e. streaming ABC/Disney stations)
Free...as in beer (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the main beef I got with DRM. Not that I have to pay per view, or that I should pay more or whatever. It is the fact that I cannot use the content I pay for in an enjoyable way. It's the tether attached, not the price tag.
Free...as in drugs (Score:5, Insightful)
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Keep stuff after graduation? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is seriously not enforced, so they shouldn't worry about it. I still use software (mostly MSFT and Anti-virus stuff) I received free from college. And I graduated several years ago already.
Server enforced (Score:5, Interesting)
The music checks back with the server every so often to make sure you are still authorized to play. If you are not listed as a student, your ability to play is gone.
Parent
Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle. (Score:2, Insightful)
Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle.
About as bad as DRM gets (Score:4, Informative)
another reason (Score:3, Insightful)
Artists you can't get on RIAA download services... (Score:5, Insightful)
I guarantee that 90% of music reccomended by sites like Pitchfork aren't available on these services. If they were, people would use them.
Big Surprise (Score:2, Interesting)
We got the "Ruckus" music service - which doesn't work on Mac OS X or iPods - and is little better than an extremely low quality (and ugly) jukebox.
Of course, 99% of RPI students are still illegally stealing music on the internet, but the school and the student government don't care because
An RPI Student's View... (Score:5, Informative)
Needless to say, as soon as the first group of 30 were sued for using i2hub, the student council inexplicably gets an offer from the otherwise unknown music service known as Ruckus [ruckusnetwork.com]. The student council was at least nice enough to give us a chance to respond to a survey regarding our acceptance of a music service on campus, but despite an underwhelming response of 23%, RPI inexplicably chooses Ruckus [rpi.edu] to be its provider, despite the fact that 2/3rds of poll respondants wanted MP3 downloads, 90% wanted to burn CDs, and 85% wanted to download and own the music [rpi.edu], and Ruckus is, of course, none of these, supporting only Microsoft DRM.
Despite some quiet rancor [rpi.edu] about the deal, and its possible relationship to a 'blackmail' deal with the RIAA, the student council twisted the facts [rpi.edu] and approved Ruckus anyway [rpi.edu], intending to keep it through the 06-07 year [rpi.edu], despite some [rpi.edu] qualms [rpi.edu] about its quality of service.
I haven't seen any long-term reviews of it either though, but I'm not particularly a fan of it. Too bad we students will have to pay for it in the end even if we don't want it.
Re:An RPI Student's View... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ruckus is Windows-only (despite a significant Mac base at my school) and only provides DRM-protected Windows Media downloads. Burning isn't free. You can't use it with an iPod, of course. To make matters worse, the software creates pop-up ads while the software is open.
Something dirty is happening behind the scenes in th
Napster is perfect for me (Score:3, Informative)
I think Napster is perfect for people who have eclectic tastes in music and are interested in discovering new artists. I plan on buying a subscription when I graduate.
Must've forgotten to take her mind-control pills.. (Score:2)
Wow. You know your business model's in trouble if your own VP doesn't buy into your FUD.
Man, I miss the good ol' days when you could run a music FTP undetectable on the university's fat pipe, and nobody would bat an eye. The selection was usually better than the RIAA's endless crapstream of
These people don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this not describe the entire recent history of the RIAA?
Free isn't enough. (Score:3, Interesting)
I refuse to use CTrax (Score:3, Insightful)
A) The interface was poorly designed and implemented in my opinion. A poor interface will stop a lot of people.
B) It forced the use of Internet Explorer on its site. I refuse to use IE. It is not because I am anti-MS, but it is because I have had serious problems in windows created by security flaws in IE. Furthermore, this dependency on IE screwed users of other OS's.
C) All of the music was wma format with DRM. I don't like DRM. Not only that, I fairly frequently reinstall windows on my machine because I frequently change hardware and/or toy with my system in various ways. Those files don't like being used after windows has been reinstalled due to previously stated hw changes.
Because of these problems, I found other sources for music.
twisted terminology (Score:4, Informative)
Can't keep the music after graduation? Can't burn songs to CD? That's not free. The WSJ should not have used that term so carelessly. They fell hard for typical RIAA propaganda. The RIAA routinely tries to swap black and white, and then acting as if everyone agrees with their interpretation, proceeds with all sorts of arguments that would make perfect sense if the foundation they were based on was solid.
I especially enjoyed Sherman's statement: 'Universities have a particular responsibility to teach students the value of intellectual property because they are "probably the No. 1 creator of intellectual property."' Many professors do their own thing of course, but too many professors are more interested in mining their grad students' ideas for things they can publish under their own names and get all the credit for themselves. The Universities quietly prefer this because they have rights over their employees' thinking, but not their customer's. And let's not forget the racket (usually university run, but not necessarily) whereby publishers cheat the professors who cheated the students. Next time you see one of those digital libraries that is pleased to offer the opportunity to purchase copies of a paper for the low low price of $10 each, know that the authors of that paper will receive precisely 0% of that money. Those are the values that are passed on, that those of you who have "paid your dues" and had the honor of having a professor lift your work out of the morass of trash and sloppy thinking and fix it up and publish it, can, if you choose, one day go on to become publishers or professors and get in on the gravy side of the racket.
I also enjoyed the whine about students spurning Napster to buy from iTunes.
Re:twisted terminology (Score:3)
It's as free as any other "benefits" are. If I can call the ability to use the university's computer labs free, than (in my case) Napster is free. And if THAT'S not free, than having the university pay for a service where students can keep the music or burn it to CD still isn't free.
YOU'RE the one twisting words, by insisting on a definition that agrees more with "free as in speech" than "free as in beer", even though the latter
WTF are universities even involved? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fast forward 50 years. Now the universities seem to be some kind of theme park, and as the mafia expression says, everyone pays. Why the hell are universities so much into the entertainment business that they're offering students involuntary music service subscriptions? Liability issues aside (I don't think the RIAA could win such a case against a university anyway), this is just f*@*ing ridiculous. Univerities do NOT need to be county clubs that happen to offer classes to interested sober members.
Ungrateful (Score:3, Insightful)
So let me get this straight ... you get access to a large selection of music with mildly annoying DRM for free but if you want a non-expiring version, then you have to pay for it?
If you think this is poor, woe betide you when you get out into the "real world" as you'll find out that no-one here gets free unlimited downloads in that way and, shock horror, also has to pay for non-expiring versions of the music they like.
Personally, I think its a bit much you complaining about something for free which is obviously being paid for by someone else, but there you go.
Re:what software? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think I must be the oddball because I have gone to PSU and use Napster quite a lot. Don't know what I'll do when the subscription goes away to be honest.
I'll tell you why I use it over pirating from a P2P system:
1. While I have it, it's legal.
2. While I have it, it's no more expensive than P2P.
3. Using Napster doesn't mean that when it goes away I can't go to P2P to get the same music.
4. It's a lot easier to download from Napster than it is from P2P... no worrying about firewalls blocking inbound ports, no worrying about share ratios, no worrying about "remotely queued"
5. I've seen D/L speeds of 2 MB/s. (Yes, that's BYTES, not bits.) Let's see you get that on P2P. (True, that's not reliable, but it's rare that you'll see a transfer go at under, say, 100 KB/s. At the same time, it's not uncommon to see P2P dls go at, say, 1 KB/s, especially when you take into account #4.)
6. It's a lot easier to find stuff I want on Napster, because they have all of the metadata correct. I can easily find all the tracks on an album, by an artist, etc. without having to worry if people are providing all of them.
7. I DON'T have to sort through 10 different versions of the same song that are all different somehow and try to figure out which one to get.
8. I DON'T have to worry about downloading a song and getting static, which has happened before.
Now, there are of course some drawbacks, such as it's harder to take it with you if you go on a trip, listen to in Linux, or keep after graduation (though none are impossible), and you have to deal with a really crappy interface, but there are a LOT of benefits over straight P2P.
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