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Music Media

MP3.com 'Subscriber Service' 128

Posted by timothy from the now-how-much-would-you-pay dept.
nelomolen writes: "Looks like MP3.com is trying to promote a new $2.99/month ($29.99/year) ad-free service. as a listener I've come to love MP3.com as it provides exposure to a LOT of good music (and bad). In the past I know artists have had it out for MP3.com in regards to their "payback for playback" -- wonder if this new ad-free subscription service will help?"
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MP3.com 'Subscriber Service' More

MP3.com 'Subscriber Service'

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  • why? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by *xpenguin* ( 306001 )
    why are you paying for ad removal service when you can just use a proxy like guidescope [guidescope.com]
    • Actually Proxmitron [spywaresucks.org] http://spywaresucks.org/prox/ is better.

      On the http://www.mp3.com/adfree/ page it filtered out all 3 ads.

    • Re:why? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ywwg ( 20925 )
      I would think of paying because I want them to stay in business. Sure, I could pay 50 cents and take every single newspaper out of the dispenser, but I don't because I'm not an asshole. Likewise, just because you _can_ get rid of ads with various programs doesn't mean you should. Why not support a service you enjoy? I'm tired of all my favorite sites dying because they don't have any money, we don't need people like you making things worse
      • I don't really see how using an ad proxy is being an asshole, on the same level as stealing all the newspapers out of a newspaper box. The site hosting the ad gets revenue for that ad impression whether or not you actually view the ad, whereas stealing newspapers... well, that's just theft, and totally pointless theft at that, because you're only doing it to be malicious. (Unless you really intended to read all the copies of the paper.)


        I think it's my RIGHT to be able to install whatever software I want on my computer to avoid having banner ad cruft clog up my browser.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
          Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • > I simply tend NOT to go to sites that bombard me with advertisements. I use to love the Onion, but there is something in their Javascript that constantly crashes my browsers with their popups.

            The nicest thing about only enabling Javashit for my bank and brokerage, and surfing with it disabled everywhere else, is that one tends not to notice.

            There is a special place in hell for the fuckwith that dreamed up the abortion called Javashit/ECMAscript/LiveScript/Whateverthefuckscri ptitscalledtoday.

            And I, for one, hope the pigfucker roasts there for eternity.

      • I would think of paying because I want them to stay in business.

        Why not pay them using a method that benefits both of you? Buy the DAM (normal audio) CD's by the bands you like, or buy an MP3 CD with 10 alubums worth of stuff!


        I wouldn't feel guilty for blocking a Sephora ad--I'm male, and wouldn't even buy their product.

  • P4p (Score:3, Informative)

    by OmegaDan ( 101255 ) on Saturday September 01, 2001 @02:59PM (#2243546) Homepage
    The P4P service unfourtanatley is a "wealth redistribution" scheme ... You have to pay 20$ a month to join the service ...

    WTF? I have to pay 20$ a month to get paid? Mp3.com takes their cut of the subscriber money and then redistributes the rest back to artists by popularity ... So alot of artists loosing money is paying for the few who are making alot of money :)

    • Re:P4p (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      So alot of artists loosing money is paying for the few who are making alot of money :)


      Oddly enough, that is exactly how the traditional record labels work...

    • $3 a month? It took my band 5 months to earn a measly $3.23 from mp3.com.

      • $3 a month? It took my band 5 months to earn a measly $3.23 from mp3.com.

        Yeah? Where's your URL?

        I don't mean that in the sense of, "Give me your URL," but in the sense of, "Why aren't you giving everyone and their dog your URL?"

        You can't just expect to put your songs on MP3.com and for them to magically make money all by themselves. You've got to put the URL in places where people can click on it, such as, Oh I don't know...your slashdot .sig? :)

        If you don't have people trotting over your page to click on the song links, you aren't going to make any money. You should pass out the URL at your gigs. Use MP3.com's DAM CD service to make CD's to sell at gigs. Post flyers with the express URL on it.

        You have to get people to go to your page, first.
        • This slashdot account was created way before my current band was, so that explains the absence of it in my signature (and also, maybe, my really bad sig).

          For the most part, I try to put my .sig out there, in other forums (especially music related ones), and yes, on flyers. We don't have DAM CDs, but we have our own DIY CDs for sale, linked from our mp3.com page. And, if you want to know, check out http://www.mp3.com/freeclinickelly

          And I'm not blaming mp3.com, I think they're great. I'm just laughing at our meager band fund. ;)
          • This slashdot account was created way before my current band was, so that explains the absence of it in my signature (and also, maybe, my really bad sig).

            Aaaaah... Well, you can always update your slashdot .sig. :)

            Also, www.hornfans.com is a great place for page hits, too, seeing how you're at utexas.edu and all. (How 'bout that Cedric Benson?) :)

            I could go into a long list of things you could also do but it's probably not on-topic; the short version is -- P4P comes from working to get people to your page, it doesn't just happen magically.

            Well, it might happen magically if you put the phrase "anna kournikova nude!" all over it... :)
        • maybe he dosen't wanna pester people with it ;)
    • The objections to the P4P plan are silly. If you don't make more than $20 per month, YOU DON'T HAVE TO SIGN UP FOR IT! In other words, it's not just a simple redistribution scheme. The money for P4P comes out of a flat amount (originally $1M per month, if I recall correctly).

      If you aren't signed up for P4P, you can still track how much P4P you would have made if you were signed up for it. This way, you can spend several months building up traffic to your MP3.com page, getting people to click on it and check it regularly, until you're sure you can make that much.

      I signed up for the $20/month "Premium Artist Service" as soon as they started it, and I have yet to have a month where I didn't net a profit...

      ...and I've done nothing more than put my URL in my Slashdot .sig!

      Imagine how much money I'd make if I actually marketed my music?

  • ...as it provides exposure to a LOT of good music

    I haven't really been paying attention to popular music the last few years. Are their any "break out" bands that have come out through the ranks of MP3.com? In other words, is there any of this "good music" that has appealed to a wide audience?

    • For the most part, it's a bunch of artists most people will never hear about. That's unfortunate for the artists (some of them are quite good), but it does mean that they're not "mass produced" alternative, for the most part. MP3.com carries a huge variety of stuff that you'd never find on a radio station.

      Musicians often have to make compromises to get signed by a record label. Internet artists do not, for the most part.

      -John
    • Lots of excellent electronica/techno/trance type music available to browse, which commercial radio completely ignores: 303Infinity, Astral Projection, Bassic, PPK, and many others.

      On the more mainstream genre, Flickerstick is one of the bands in VH1's "Bands on the Run" series, and their music is surprisingly good.

      -j
      • Don't forget about Trance Control, they rock too.

        Did you hear? PPK recently got signed with Perfecto (Paul Oakenfold's record label). Regardless of one's opinion of Oakie, I'd call that a break-through.

    • Re:Clue me in (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      midtown is a pop/punk band that mp3.com has supposedly awarded over $1000 and have gotten somewhat of a big following and are inching towards the status of bands like new found glory.
    • I haven't really been paying attention to popular music the last few years

      You haven't missed anything.

      Keep listening to the unpopular music....

    • The music industry doesn't work that way. Music is a business, the musicians who are commercially successful are generally more businesspeople and less musicians. It's all about who the record labels promote, which certainly is not directly related to (maybe inversely, actually) the quality of the artists' works.

      maru
      www.mp3.com/pixal

  • Check out eMusic (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EisPick ( 29965 ) on Saturday September 01, 2001 @03:00PM (#2243551)
    You'd never know they existed, but eMusic [emusic.com] is already offering unlimited mp3 downloads of major-label albums for $10/month.

    I think the reason you don't hear anything about them is that they were acquired by Vivendi-Universal, who is quietly sitting on them until they roll out whatever big new service they're developing.

    I assume eMusic's successor will only offer crippled mp3s that can't be copied or that expire after some period of time, but for now, they've got plain ol' mp3s -- and they even make it easy to download a whole album with one click.

    The downside, of course, is that they have a limited selection of music. You can't download any CD ever recorded. But there is a lot of good music on there. For example, they seem to have the entire Fantasy Records catalogue online, which, if you're a jazz or blues fan, means a whole lot of really good albums. In the first week, I downloaded 62 albums.

    I assume that one day eMusic will morph into something I no longer want to subscribe to, but until then I'm sucking down everything I can grab.

    It's definitely worth checking out.
    • http://www.emusic.com/s=600003b9132b31f89cc;r=d08; /help/faq.html [emusic.com]

      What is bitrate? What bitrate are EMusic's MP3s encoded at?
      Bitrate is the number of bits per second used in the encoding process. A higher encoding rate usually means a larger size file, but higher quality sound. EMusic currently encodes its MP3s at 128 Kbps.

      Sounds like a good service, but I was hoping for something a bit better than that. I don't mind paying for music, but the quality has to be there.

      How does EMusic protect against piracy? Very simple -- we trust our customers. We believe that if downloadable music is presented in an inexpensive and flexible way, most consumers will do the right thing.

      It's a lot easier to trust your customers when you're offering 128K MP3s. Question is, space limitations or piracy worries anyway? I realize 180,000 songs takes up some room, but that's their problem, not mine. It would be nice to have different ranges too- maybe 64K to demo the song, and 320K if you actually want it. But I can't help but think that offering the songs in low quality is some kind of indication of fear of mass trading once the songs are released to the world.

      • It would be nice to have different ranges too- maybe 64K to demo the song

        Reminds me of MP3.com's 32 kbps lo-fi stream and 128 kbps download.

        and 320K if you actually want it.

        You don't really need 320 kbps for CD quality. Recent versions of LAME have a --r3mix switch that allows CD quality (i.e. transparent reproduction of 0-20 kHz stereo audio) at an average rate of 180 to 200 kbps; read the "quality" section of r3mix.net [r3mix.net] for details.

      • Re:strcat(tin, cans) (Score:3, Interesting)

        by DennyK ( 308810 )
        Trust their customers? Haha! Guess they forgot to mention their little crusade back in the days before the Napster filters, when they encoded watermarks into all of their MP3 files and then got users who were trading them on Napster banned...

        BTW, most of the MP3s in my collection are 128k. That seems to be the most popular format for trading, since it fits decent quality into a very reasonable file size (something slightly less than 1MB/min.). Yeah, I know you "purists" out there will mod me down, but I just don't have the hard drive space to store 320k MP3s of all my music, and 128k sounds fine to me on my system. Not as good as higher rates, of course...if I were burning to a CD or something, I'd want better quality, but for listening on my computer, I'd rather have twice as much music at 128k quality than what I could fit on my drive at 320k. And since my CD player's busted... ;-D

        Also BTW, I've found many great artists through MP3.com...Blue Cyberia, Amethystium, 303Infinity, Egan, Higgins, and my favorite, GNOMUSY. All excellent music that probably won't ever see the light of day on a RIAA-produced medium. If you find an artist you like, buy one of their CDs for $10 or so.

        DennyK

        • From an artist's perspective, for me, 128k is an irritation. We produce our music au gratis exclusively for our mp3.com audience. I mix something down and the vocals (our vocalist is extremely good) have a particular sound and level. After I make the mp3, the sound is just slightly different, just not as clear, just not as good. Very often the dynamics will change such that a particular "track" in the song that was mixed to sit at a particular volume level relative to other parts will end up just a tiny bit too loud or too soft in the mp3. I find myself encoding the mp3, then going back and adjusting the original mix, then reencoding the mp3, and repeating this process 4 or 5 times. The problem is always with the vocals. They just lose their "smoothness" at 128K.
          I would like to be able to have 192K content available on mp3.com . I believe this would make the sound of the mp3 significantly closer to my wave mixdown without adding too much additional size to the files.

          maru
          www.mp3.com/pixal

    • It's definitely worth checking out.

      It certainly is. Seems like an interesting collection of artists and tracks. Some things to note (the devil's in the details):
      • $10/month requires a twlevee-month commitment
      • "EMusic currently encodes its MP3s at 128 Kbps." (read the FAQ [emusic.com])
      On the other hand, they *are* offering a
      30-day Free Trial [emusic.com] -- with a 100-song cap on downloads...

      I assume eMusic's successor will only offer crippled mp3s...

      Some would argue that 128kbps encoding does cripple the format. :)
      • If you go to the mp3 newsgroups, where I've been expanding my collection for years, you'll find the vast majority of encodes are 128 kbps. This was a decision made by the earliest adapters of mp3 (adnittedly, at a time when dial-up was the rule, broadband a rare exception), and is in my opinion a reasonable trade-off between size and quality. The only difference I see between 128 and 160 is a slightly "crisper" sound. (A similar crisp sound can be obtained from a 128 bit mp3 with any number of dsp "enhancer" plugins available for winamp...I know purists will scream at the thought, but these people seem more motivated by religion than by science.)

        128 is quite adequate in conveying the qualities of a musician's performing and composition skills, which are what I think most people enjoy about music.

        I've heard many people claim that such low bitrates are offensive to their ears, I just don't see it myself. It's way better than cassette tapes or FM radio, for instance -- but it isn't fidelity issues that have killed or wounded those media.

        Now that broadband is here, perhaps it's justified to expect an "upgrade" to higher bitrate mp3, but I'm not throwing several thousand 128 kbps mp3s.

        And, though I download a lot less than I did when I first subscribed to Emusic, I'm still one of their happy campers, and I expect I will remain so unless Vivendi changes the service.

        Frankly, I doubt that they will change the service. I suspect they view Emusic as a useful, low-profile hedge, in case it turns out that consumers will reject all the proprietary-format copy-protected services.

        • The only difference I see between 128 and 160 is a slightly "crisper" sound [...] 128 is quite adequate in conveying the qualities of a musician's performing and composition skills, which are what I think most people enjoy about music.

          So I'm lazy, that's all I'm going to excerpt today... Check out
          r3mix.net [r3mix.net] for a few details regarding sound quality. I'm more or less sold on VBR as the way to go, as there are more than a few tracks out there that sound iffy at 128kbps, even using the cheapie hardware available to me at work.
          In the main, though, I would agree that 128kbps (or lower, for some) is an adequate bitrate if one is merely looking for an alternative to FM-quality broadcasts and isn't concerned about maintaining a given encoding for archival purposes. Fidelity issues may not be the "killer" issue for most -- I agree -- but it quickly becomes an issue when forking over the dough for those self-same tracks. :)
    • "The downside, of course, is that they have a limited selection of music"

      It depends on your tastes; I'm happily finding a lot of electic music on there, makes me quite happy. Soundtracks and Humour Soundtracks are cool as well.
      • Excuse me if I overstated things. I meant "limited" in comparison to the average Tower Records store. I did try to make the point that I, too, found more than enough desirable selections to justify the price.
    • Excess bandwidth costs for many users in Australia are around 20c/mb. So in addition to subscription costs, some people are paying an extra $1/5mb track. It's hardly something to get excited about.
    • Interesting that you suggest leaving mp3.com for eMusic, and you mention that they're owned by Vivendi. Mp3.com is also owned by Vivendi. Welcome to the brave new world, where going to the competition leads you back to the same media giant.

  • I have been an artist on mp3.com [mp3.com] for about 3 years, and at first I thought it was a great place for an independant artist such as myself to promote my music, however as soon as commercial bands began having sites there I believe that mp3.com turned too much into something mtv-esque. For instance there are schlock bands such as the pre-made-on-tv O-town hosted there now. After that I decided I would add all new material to besonic.com [besonic.com], a great site which is populated mostly by independant artists. As for the payback for playback, I didn't really make enough money to warrent the 20$ a month it cost to stay in the program. I also believe that that program caused some artists to become greedy. Now they want visitors to pay aswell? I don't see it as being worth it. For all I know, I would say MP3.COM IS DYING. Perhaps they have suffered one suit too many.
  • What would happen if someone added micropayment downloads to Internet radio? This would require a custom player, which would be capable of both streaming and downloading (with secure payment). It would work something like this: In addition to the normal netradio controls, there would be a "buy" button on the interface. Clicking that button would cause the player to charge you a small amount ($1?) to download a high-quality version of the song that is currently playing. There could be additional "Would you like to know more?" buttons that would take you to more information on the artist, customized streams, user ratings, etc.
    • The music industry doesnt want you to pay for a single song, they want you to buy the whole album.

      And for a commerical webcast radio that points you to the CD, the one I use does. http://www.tuneto.com/ [tuneto.com]
      • The music industry doesnt want you to pay for a single song, they want you to buy the whole album.


        That only applies to CD's really: it costs the same amount of money to produce/distribute/carry a CD Single as a CD Album (and the single isn't significantly less expensive than a double album). The record industry spent decades on a single-based business model and prospered. The compact disc is the reason for the change in approach.



        I would be reasonably sure that the record label that introduces affordable single file downloads will be successful. Most people I know only buy an album if they like two or more of the songs on it. The logical conclusion, therefore, is that there are a fair number of people who would buy one song but not the album, in which case, the record label is ahead on the deal.



        And the Euro scene is still single dominated.



        WRT changing music industry business models, take a look back some 60 years:



        In 1942, Capitol Records was formed. Within ten years, they were the dominant record label worldwide (with Sinatra and many other luminaries on their roster). One way they achieved this: they realized that radio wasn't the enemy. Until Capitol, record execs refused to license their records for radio play and routinely sued disc jockeys. Capitol realized that DJ's were free publicity, not a threat to album sales. So they negotiated extremely fair terms with disc jockeys and the rest is history.



        Replace radio/DJ's with modern counterparts, and it makes you think, doesn't it?

        • >>Replace radio/DJ's with modern counterparts, ??>>and it makes you think, doesn't it?

          Except that back then it wasn't possible to take the song you just heard off of the radio and convert it into a well mastered vinyle.

          CD burners are cheap. A well encoded MP3 is equal to the cd version, or at least good enough to make the cheapskates not mind the difference.

    • This is a great idea. I would gladly do this. Have the low quality streaming(64kbps?) tracks available for free on the artist's page, and then allow members to download the 1440kbps .WAV version of the song for like 1$ each. That would be a great music site. You could have like a $5 annual membership fee and a free trial period. Of course a 3 minute song would be about 30MB or maybe 16MB if it was losslessly compressed with, say, Monkeys Audio or FLAC. Probably not practical for people with dial ups, but there are probably enough broadband users to make it profitable. I, for one, will never pay for lossy compressed garbage.
    • Never mind music. This would be extremely nice for all kinds of internet content. But industry insiders and pundits still refuse to go near micropayments. The mantra you hear over and over is "consumers won't go for it."

      Well, advertising doesn't generate enough revenue. Subscriptions only work for very specific audiences. (Porn and financial data, mostly. I make no inferences.) Now we hear nonsense about squeezing more money out of ISPs -- a totally destructive proposal which is (fortunately) unimplementable.

      So what does it take for content providers to give micropayment a try?

      • I sure as hell wouldn't buy micropayements.

        Why?

        No money ^_^

        Of course I do not listen to RIAA shit either. That is one reason that I like MP3.com so much, it has a good variety of celtic and medieval bands :)

    • The technical issue you describe isn't really the limitation (the payment mechanism needn't be built into the player). What is the limitation is the lack of digital rights management in the current media players. That will be resolved in the next couple of months, when Real starts rolling out en-masse the new version of Real player. The player supports digital rights management, where a content provider can provide exactly the service you describe. The player keeps track of the purchased licenses. There's obviously more to it but I can't really talk about it.

      maru
      www.mp3.com/pixal

      • Have you looked at RealPlayer recently?

        What began as some neat streaming technology has been turned into one of the ugliest, most bloated pieces of 'adware'/'spamware' around :(

        Even after opting out of several screenfuls of shite, it still goes and installs its and plasters it's shortcut icon all over your system...

        And it has a nasty load-on-startup launcher thing - it's all the crap like this that helps maintain the slowness of an average Windows install...

  • I thought mp3.com was supposed to take crap.. i mean not-well-known artists and give them publicity? Thats a good idea, better than choosing 5 loosers, making them popstars and then making a program about how they made the popstars.. lol.

    Anything that works on a crippled download method will die a horrible death (unless they can get a really powerful law in to stop people hacking the software and then use scare tactics and make examples to make sure no-one tries to bring down their money making machine, but then who would do that?)

    So, if they're to unknown to sell cds, then what makes them think people will want to pay for their compressed mp3s?

    -tfga
  • I'll only start paying MP3.com when it:

    A: Stops raising the damn prices of CDs!!!! They have been slowly yet steadily raising the price, ugh! It now costs the same to download a CD as it used to buy one, grrrr.

    B: GIVE ME SOME HIGHER BANDWIDTH FEEDS! 196KBp/s would be nice, 256KBp/s would be better. Crud, if I like the artists I pay for the CD anyways, well, I would be paying MORE, but they keep on RAISING THE DAMN PRICES! (See above comment).

    It is now cheaper to go to independent labels, ugh. MP3.com of course used to be one, but then they FUCKED UP and let people store their RIAA crap on the MP3.com servers, ick!
    • Stops raising the damn prices of CDs!!!! They have been slowly yet steadily raising the price, ugh! It now costs the same to download a CD as it used to buy one, grrrr.

      Are you sure that's all MP3.com's fault? According to their Help section for musicians [mp3.com], the artists are setting prices on their own CDs. MP3.com just sets the limits on the minimum/maximum price (currently $3.99 and $30.00, respectively) for the downloaded CDs, then adds $3.99 to determine the price of the physical CD.

      Maybe too many artists bought into the hype they can get rich off the Internet? Or (more likely), they raised their CD prices to compensate for not being in the "Pay for Play" system?

      Musicians don't always make sensible business choices when it comes to pricing CDs. (After all, if they knew everything about selling music, they'd probably run a record company.) For example, I've found one singer [mp3.com] who charges $6.99 and $10.98 for the netCD and DAM versions of her CD, when the real thing only costs $6.49 through her label's web site. I like her music, but I have to wonder what she's thinking there....
      • Hehe, welcome to FUD city. Artists that are NO LONGER ACTIVE ON mp3.com have had their CD prices raised. The fact that ALL DAM CDs now cost TWICE what they used too should indicate something to you. in fact I have not seen a DAM CD in quite awhile for under 6 or 7 bucks.
  • People on mp3.com setup radio stations of garage bands or simular tastes. They select a bunch of songs from mp3.com and make a playlist type radio station. If you are an free listener, you hear the radio spot ads between songs. But if you pay for the premium service you dont hear the ads. (Maybe 1 ad on the startup)

    Myself I'm used to radio ads, so streaming mp3 ads dont bother me. I save 3 bux. lol

  • MP3.com and Freedom of Speech (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have boycotted mp3.com since they banned The DeCSS Song. This song is obviously political commentary. How many other ideas have been quietly removed without anyone's knowledge? You can't miss what you never knew existed.
    -Scott
  • Let's see, if a guy on Oak Street was selling popsicles for 25 cents a a
    stick and another guy on Elm Street had the exact same popsicles for free,
    where would you go? The simple fact of the matter is that consumers will
    always make the most logical choice when acquiring what they want. In the
    field of digital music, it is readily available for free via many
    different routes on the internet. Hence, in setting up membership fees for
    service, MP3.com will be nailing it's own coffin shut. Undoubtedly,
    millions will abandon the service for something else out there that is
    equally as resourceful and above all free (Morpheus come immedialty to mind).
    For these companies, MP3.com ludicrous decision is a golden opportunity.

    If MP3.com wants money, then fuck MP3.com. As a company, all they are is
    a popular conduit for digital music tansfer - big deal. They've done
    nothing to achieve loyalty in me as a consumer. If they are banking on the
    fact that the majority of MP3.com users are capatilistic moral crusaders
    who believe that paying for thier service is the noble thing to do - then
    they are banking on bullshit. Furthermore, even if I did feel that way,
    why should MP3.com be making any money? Nobody at MP3.com wrote the music.
    They don't give a fuck about the artists, they just want money, like any
    other company under the sun. Morpheus here I come, so long MP3.com.
    • No, actually, fuck *you*.

      What if the guy down the street giving away the popsicles had STOLEN THEM from the guy selling them for 25 cents!?! Still interested? I would hope not.

      MP3.com gets their music with *consent*, and still gives it away for free. You don't have to buy their premium service to get the free tunes, you just have to put up with ads. MP3.com is entitled to whatever they make in this business, as they aren't STEALING anything from artists *cough*Morpheus*cough*, and they're providing a valuable service, ie: storage space, organization, search utilities, and how about that giant monthly bandwidth bill?

      On the other hand, if Free-Uber-Alles is really your mantra, expect to see me at your house tonight with a flashlight and a few garbage bags. I figure, why should I BUY anything, when I can just raid your house for it? I mean, it's the *obvious* decision, right?
      • Well fuck you. Hmm Let me think of an example. Oh, I got one, remember Napster, free as the sun, with millions of users? Remember what happened when the wanted to charge money. Bye-bye napster. Get real, people will go for the free candy buddy.

        - phranck@nycap.rr.com
    • Sorry Buddy, But Stealing != Copying!!!

  • Sign me up! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by tempest303 ( 259600 )
    I'm signing up as soon as I'm done writing this, but I do plan to "speak with my money". I'd pay more like up to *$10* a month if they could make a couple changes:
    1. For people that pay the extra $$$, make available 160-256 VBR Ogg files, so the music you get doesn't sound like crap
    2. a filtering service - allow me to mark a band as "blacklisted", so they don't show up in searches, etc, or are at least marked so i know not to check them out again.

    If they can pull these off, I'll sign up immediately for a more expensive monthly service. Also, contrast this with Napster's plan of having their own retarded proprietary format, where you pay monthly, and don't get to keep ANYTHING you downloaded after you quit the service.
    • For people that pay the extra $$$, make available 160-256 VBR Ogg files, so the music you get doesn't sound like crap

      Sure, 128Kbps MP3's aren't great, but if the songs you are getting sound that bad, I doubt that a higher bitrate is going to make much difference. A lot of MP3.com artists lack the equipment and/or technical knowledge to produce songs that sound as good as those produced by professionals. I wonder if they could justify a 50-100% increase in bandwidth consumption when a lot of artists don't know what they are doing in the first place.

    • For people that pay the extra $$$, make available 160-256 VBR Ogg files

      Pointless. Decoding the 128 kbps MP3 songs that artists upload and re-encoding them as 160-256 kbps OGG will only further degrade the sound quality.

  • they stopped being fun when they went public. It's very sad to see the number of early, early supporters they've completely alienated with their mercenary ways. The musicians who support them -- MP3.com could do pretty much anything at this point and they'd still support them, which is a shame. The musicians who don't support MP3.com any longer... this isn't going to bring them back.
  • i'm really frustrated with the way the web is going.

    sometimes i think the federal government should just take it over and say "fuck it, it's a free national infrastructure for everyone -- register here, put your content here, the hell with it".

    for example, the large city libraries could become information nodes, a server farm on one end, access at the other, and high bandwidth to the local cable or telco infrastructure.

    i hate to put it this way, but the riaa and mpaa are abberations that steal our freedoms. we, as primates, are natually inquisitive and expressive, in both an auditory and visual sense. for industries to claim they have an inherent right to profit from either side is simply a localized abberation in time against human rights.

    visual and auditory products are so easily replicated, and it's such a fine line between parody and duplication, that individual rights (or perhaps individual activites) will, at some point, destroy the visual and auditory monopolies. i firmly beleive stardom, famous actors, and guitar gods will become a thing of the past at some point.

    if you have a tangible, physical product, you make money on markup. if you have audio or visual entertainment, you make money on advertising. the powers-that-be may not like it, but they are so screwed, i don't see how they can win in the long run.

    simply put, i buy three or four magazine subscriptions. they cost me about $120 a year. i'm not going to "subscribe" to web sites. not gonna happen...at least not yet. the closest thing i've seen to something i'd pay for is yahoo. they have pretty good news, quality personals, lots of informative links. if they had audio and visual, and said they need subscribers to stay alive, i'd pay for them.

    same for google. i'd be pretty adamant about a "one-stop" portal, maybe $36 a year, with access to a wide variety of services.

    after 25 years of modems you have to question whether the private sector is (in any way) up to the task. federal control of bandwidth and storage could go a long way toward moving the web forward.

    my favorite area of mp3.com is :

    comedy and satire [mp3.com]

    ...some of the music areas are cool, but a lot of it is real crap.
    • It's the federal government that is stealing your freedoms. It's being asked to do so by the RIAA and MPAA, but it's nonetheless it that is doing it.

      If it took over the web things would be so much worse, you
  • Great; I'll have free access to this, too, from all the idiots who keep getting their domain name wrong when they sign up, sending their passwords to me.

    For those of you who might have done this, your password has been changed to "asshole", your email address has been changed to "postmaster@mp3.com", and your preferences have been set to remove you from all mailings. Have a nice day.

  • If you're a service that wants to go 'legit' by asking me to help line these people's [opensecrets.org] pockets, so that they can afford more of this [rangerinc.com] and that [slashdot.org], you can blow it out your ass.
    • Wow! So Intercontinental Absurdities (the late Frank Zappa's company), gave more than Sony and Bertelsmann combined.

      I'm kinda suprised they give anything...
  • 2.99 a year? How much money are they paying for their bandwidth?
    When I was younger ( about 7 months ago) I would spool 20 gig of MP3's a day from the nntp.
    I know that wasn't cheep for the ISP to offer and I can only emagin how much its going to cost them. Can some one explain how they can do this that cheep and still pay any form of royalties?
  • Cool! dont pay for the full year!!! hehe!
  • I don't mind the fee. They do have phat bandwidth, and as such, their service is fairly reliable.

    However, I only will pay this fee if:

    The bands get a cut of the action. They're the ones making the music and giving it away. If MP3.com recieves a penny more than operating expenses + a little for a rainy day, then screw them. If MP3.com charges, the bulk of that money better go the the artists that spent their hard earned dough to write and record it.

    They respect my privacy. I should need no more than authentication and authorization to get in. I am more than willing to put up a pot o' gold on paypal for pay sites to deduct from, so I don't have to give that pay site my personal info. Anybody interested in making such a "pot o gold" payment protocol with me should email me. I will GPL it if interested.
    • =====
      them. If MP3.com charges, the bulk of that money better go the the artists that spent their hard earned dough to write and record it.
      =====

      I suspect that is as likely to occur at mp3.com as it is at the traditional labels owned by Vivendi.

      maru
      www.mp3.com/pixal
  • This isn't really directly related to the topic here, but I'd like to address a number of points made in other comments here. It does bear on the topic of the news post, as you'll see. Also, please be aware that I'm not trying to promote either my company nor mp3.com in this post -- I'm just trying to clarify some of the facts about internet advertising, and how those facts impact mp3.com's business.

    A bit of background first. I'm CSO/CTO of AdAce, Inc. (please dont /. us), and yes, we are an ad network, reselling the advertising inventory of our partners. One of those partners is mp3.com. I originally got involved in AdAce because I, like most of you, was (and am) pissed off about the privacy violations running rampant through the internet advertising industry. I hoped (and still do) to show, by example, that an ad network can be successful without screwing with the viewers of the ads. And I am having some success.

    Anyway, to the points:

    ** Advertising revenue and blocking proxies

    Advertising is sold three ways: by impressions (showing the ad), by clicks (someone clicking on an ad banner), and by "acquisition" (someone registering or making a purchase on the advertiser's website, after having clicked on the banner). If you use an ad-filtering proxy, then you definately reduce the revenues from clicks and from acquisitions (obviously). But you might not be reducing the revenues from impressions; it all depends on whether the proxy blocks the ad banner request or the response. If the proxy blocks the initial request, then there is no impression, and no revenue. If it blocks the response, then as far as the ad serving software can tell, an impression was delivered -- the fact that no one actually saw the ad can't be detected by the server.

    The overwhelming majority of ad sales online are CPM (impression based). CPC (click based) is common, but not huge. And CPA (acquisition based) is highly disliked by the ad networks, because it means that either the ad network has to duplicate the advertiser's entire website, or the advertiser has a financial incentive to lie to us about their true number of acquisitions.

    That aside, we at AdAce really don't mind if you choose to use an ad blocking proxy. And that's true for the advertisers and ad hosts as well: most sites, mp3.com included, have more inventory (read: browser requests for webpages that have one or more slots for ads) than they actually manage to sell. So those ad impressions that are lost by your use of a proxy don't affect our profits at all; we'll still have many more opportunities to deliver the ad before the end of the ad campaign.

    Besides, if you chose to use an ad blocking proxy, then you're the kind of person who's very unlikely to click on an ad in the first place, and that's what the advertiser wants: clicks. So if we showed you an ad, you'd be very unlikely to click on it, and the only result would be that we'd spend money on the bandwidth without the advertiser getting any benefit.

    So by using an ad blocking proxy, you actually let mp3.com earn more money. Ad hosts charge based on an average CTR (click through ratio). The more often their ads generate clicks, the more money they can charge the next advertiser. If you're unlikely to click on an ad, and you use an ad blocking proxy, then you're effectively raising their CTR by removing yourself from the pool of impressions. And a higher CTR means that they can charge their advertisers more.

    Even if it weren't for all these practical and financial reasons, we still wouldn't mind about your use of an ad blocking proxy. It's your machine, and you're choosing to browse the way that you want to. We have no political, philosophical, or legal right to force you to view our ads. If you don't want to see them, then by all means, use an ad blocking proxy. Advertising is all about public response, and if your response is to get pissed at our ads, then we don't want to show them to you: the last thing that we want is a pissed off viewer. It's your browsing experience that matters to you, and we don't (nor should we) have any say in that.

    ** Popup ads

    I, too, am highly annoyed with popup ads. They piss me off just as much as spam does. In fact, I run a popup blocker on my personal computer to prevent them. It's got problems, admittedly, but it succeeds in blocking all the popups that come to me (it just blocks a little more than I want).

    Unfortunately, turning off javascript really doesn't prevent all popups. Most browsers support HTML variants that allow a link to open a new browser window (target="_new" in an <A> or <IMG> link). It'd be nice to see more web browsers that ignored these tag options, or allowed filtering on a site by site basis.

    ** MP3.com's advertising and ad free services

    We've been doing business with MP3.com for some time now, and we've ridden out their hard weather with them. I've developed a bunch of contacts within MP3.com, and all these guys are quite cool. Even their evil marketroids are cool (as far as marketroids go).

    I like these guys a lot, and I'd love to see them get out of their tough times. They've been hit by a lot of hardship over the years from outside sources and from bad internal decisions. But the greatest thing about MP3.com is that they listen to their users. If you've got a problem with something they're doing, or if you have suggestions for ways that they can improve their service, then don't hesitate to email them. Don't flame them incoherently, but if you can rationally express your outrage, then they're likely to pay attention. You don't even have to use formal English: these guys are mostly musicians, and tend to be pretty relaxed.

    There are a lot of ways to avoid advertisements on MP3.com's service. The news post mentioned one way. Ad blocking proxies are another. Apparently they also allow artists to pay a small monthly fee (something like $5/month, I'm not too clear on it), so that those artists can have ad-free areas on MP3.com's service. So /any/ user who comes in to that artist's area can browse around without worrying about ads. And no, unfortunately, I don't have a list of the artists who've done this.

    However, not all ads on MP3.com are obnoxious or irrelevant. Sure, they've got those omnipresent Heineken ads this month, and for some reason they're running a Janet Jackson in Paris ad (as if someone coming to a website will choose to fly off to Paris just because of an ad banner). But they also have advertisements from other artists on MP3.com.

    We've been running a service for MP3.com that allows artists to advertise for themselves right there, at very low rates. All throughout the music browsing sections of MP3.com, you can find these artist ads mingled in with the normal advertisements. In a month where there are more artist ad purchases, you'll naturally see more of those ads. It's all a question of what portion of the inventory is going to artist purchases from one week to another.
    • "Besides, if you chose to use an ad blocking proxy, then you're the kind of person who's very unlikely to click on an ad in the first place, and that's what the advertiser wants: clicks. So if we showed you an ad, you'd be very unlikely to click on it, and the only result would be that we'd spend money on the bandwidth without the advertiser getting any benefit."

      Whoa, an ad exec who actually has a brain in his head and understands. Will wonders never cease? You should teach a course dude ;-)
      • Well, it's a nice complement, but I'm actually a hardware/software engineer and security auditor masquerading as an ad exec.

        AdAce used to be one of my clients, and they needed a CSO. I saw a chance to help convert an evil, reprehensible industry into something approximating a sane one, and took the opportunity.

        My degree is in full custom CMOS VLSI design.

        And I'm working on a seminar for an upcoming ad conference, but it's hard to phrase things so that ad people understand. They're pretty thick. The /. crowd is much easier to talk to.

  • They got MY money... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Saturday September 01, 2001 @11:23PM (#2244540) Journal
    I love their service! I would happily trade a latte per month for their continued survival! I listen to them DAILY...

    Seriously, guys! This is one of the largeest available archives of international, cultural music... anywhere.

    They want less per month than a beer at the local pub. Give it to 'em! I urge my friends to do the same...

    -Ben
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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