AOL Enters Music Service Fray 243
Masem writes "Several sites, including The Washington Post and News.com report that AOL is planning to enter the online music service market with its own MusicNet offering. The service rates vary from $4 to $18/month, the latter giving you unlimited downloads and streaming content and 10 burnable tracks a month to CD. Future plans will include a pay-as-you-burn cost as well, expected later this year. However, the service is strictly limited to AOL customers, making many wonder if it will grab enough attention of the current subscriber base to actually be of value."
AOL CD's (Score:5, Funny)
GF.
You didn't think... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:AOL CD's (Score:3, Interesting)
New AOL sound added to v.1047b (Score:2)
shitty taste in music
Now we know where the music we listen to... (Score:5, Funny)
aren't most of their subscribers dialup? (Score:5, Interesting)
No thanks, I am not paying $23 + $4 - $x for songs when Kazaa is still fucking free.
Re:aren't most of their subscribers dialup? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's statements like this that validates everything that the RIAA claims.
If you want to positively change the music industry's approach to digital media, this surely isn't the way to do it.
Re:aren't most of their subscribers dialup? (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm... no, it doesn't validate the RIAA's claims. Not quite anyway. Had the parent poster said that he would never pay $18 to download and burn 10 songs when he could get a CD for less (yes people, you CAN find CDs out there for $12-$15, quit shopping at the mall), he would have been making a good point. But his comment still echoes the viewpoint of most internet users -- when faced with the choice of going legit and overpaying for music, or grabbing it for free, they're gonna grab it for free. The music industry has done nothing to make their online offerings attractive yet (it needs to have some compelling reason to do it, be it extras or just plain cheaper than buying a CD). If the RIAA was complaining that nobody buys CDs anymore and then jacked up the price of a CD to $20-$25 (for a single CD, so $35-40 for a double), and people said "oh I'm never buying a CD again," it doesn't validate their claims. It's business 101. If people aren't flocking to your offerings, odds are you're doing something wrong.
Re:aren't most of their subscribers dialup? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps I should have phrased it "validates everything that the RIAA claims to gullible lawmakers/ignorant public.
"If people aren't flocking to your offerings, odds are you're doing something wrong."
100% correct, but you forget that thanks to millions of lobbying dollars, it now means (more and more with every new law passed) that we must be doing something wrong!
My point was that the original poster's statements (whatever kind of music he may or may not have been referring to) can only be used by the RIAA to reinforce their position.
Re:The irony (Score:2)
But this does nothing to address the stupidity of it all. They get their 'free' music, thinking that they've gotten away with something. Meanwhile, the people who have a clue are the ones who aren't downloading songs for free, and aren't buying the music at stores. In other words, they're the people who have decided to pick up their marbles and go play somewhere else until such time as the RIAA decides to play a fair game. It's the same that you'd do with any other product. The only difference is that the ability to transform music into a digital medium makes stealing it a nearly effortless proposition, so instead of playing by the rules, people opt to do this instead.
Re:aren't most of their subscribers dialup? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:aren't most of their subscribers dialup? (Score:5, Insightful)
It might validate them in their eyes, but as far as it being a good argument, that's questionable. He does bring up a good point about the pricing.
My math was a little different. You get 10 tracks a month, but you pay $18 a month. So you're buying an album for $18, that's a little spendy.
The flip side is that you get streaming options (presumably from the actual content...) and your CD is nothing but music you want. That's not all bad.
But there's still the sticker shock deal like the guy mentioned. Yeah, he sounds bad for saying Kazaa is "fucking free", but when you think about what he's really saying here, Kazaa is just plain a better service. I imagine lotsa people'd be happy to pay $20 to use Kazaa, just for the right to use it legally. (Note: that's completely different than paying $20/mo to use Kazaa because the company demands it.)
The RIAA hasn't figured out yet that the price tag isn't the major issue here (Lots of people are buying $50 games when the tools the pirate them are there and waiting to be used), it's a matter of the service. The RIAA still has a wonderful opportunity here that they're arrogantly overlooking. They should set up their own music download service. All the songs they can muster, they guarantee the quality, and they provide a server that can handle quick downloads. That's it. Don't make it more complicated than that.
I mean seriously, every single music service I've seen has pricing policies that resemble cell phone plans!
Re:aren't most of their subscribers dialup? (Score:4, Insightful)
Downloading music is easier, cheaper, and thanks to the new copy protected CD's, of greater utility than buying it at the store. Heck, it's easier and cheaper and of greater utility than driving to a store even if they were handing out the stupid copy protected CD's for free.
The right way to take advantage of this situation seems obvious to me. Imagine:
- A subscription service priced a little above what the average music buyer spent on recordings a few years ago.
- Artist royalties paid in proportion to each artist's downloads and total subscription revenue.
- More music to choose from than with traditional distribution (after all, old and/or very obscure titles consuming a little disk space is much less of a problem than unsold physical inventory)
- Reliable servers with enough bandwidth and physical locations to make it easy to get what you want whenever you want it.
- Consistently good quality files available in several formats. No hassles with downloading a song only to find that it's incomplete, recompressed, or otherwise poor quality. No downloading an ogg file only to find that some idiot converted it from an MP3.
- An easy user interface. Finding and retrieving the songs you want should be a no-brainer. Convenience sells.
- Very high download limits, if any. Subscribers should be able to hear what they want, when they want, without having to maintain a huge local collection. The only incentives to keep local copies should be to avoid download time & network outages, or to transfer to other media for portable use. Essentially, being a subscriber should be a lot like having the world's largest music collection, only more convenient.
- Losslessly compressed files available, though possibly with a somewhat more expensive account to offset the higher bandwidth consumption. If this service is to replace CD's for all purposes, it will have to provide equal or better sound quality.
- NO copy protection of any kind. The songs are not the product. The service is. People will be more willing to pay for that service if it is more useful to them. DRM can only reduce the value of that service, and thus reduce customer's willingness to pay for it.
While this would almost certainly result in people paying less per song, I believe that most people would be willing to spend more on music per month than average CD purchases. The recording industry would get the increased income it wants. Consumers would get the music and fair-use rights that they want. And independent artists would get an opportunity to gain more exposure and get paid at least something for their music, instead of having to give it away on MP3.com and only hope that someone might occasionally buy a CD.Music retailers would, however be screwed. But so be it. Holding back digital music distribution for the sake of the record stores would make about as much sense as holding back automobiles for the sake of livery stables.
Re:aren't most of their subscribers dialup? (Score:2)
I download music from Kazaa all the time. I'm completely willing to pay for music I download but I'm not going to pay this much money for something as stupid as this. The only kind of plan that the RIAA is willing to consider is one that keeps them exactly as relevent as they were in the days of vinyl records and that's just not going to float anymore whether they realise it or not.
The reason they aren't getting any response is because their product doesn't have the kind of value to their customers that they think it does. Free is closer to our price point than this os free is going to be the choice for a lot of people. I know that the inevitable response is that people will always choose free over any actual price but I don't agree with that and think it's too simplistic an approach.
The price of songs might end up being as little as
Devil's Advocate (Score:3, Interesting)
If we want our entertainment companies to take us seriously, we must in effect stage personal strikes. I don't buy CDs not simply because I can't get the mix I want, but because I think it is ridiculous that 25 year old albums cost $14+, especially when they're sometimes of LPs of less than 40 minutes of music. They can argue all they want about how much it costs to produce new albums, but if it went platinum over 15 years ago I'm pretty sure the costs are now negligible.
Re:Devil's Advocate (Score:2)
Our personal strikes aren't going to help it. It's going to further the RIAA's cause in showing that sales have declined due to P2P.
Our own "personal strikes" are going to hurt the cause that we are trying to prove.
Re:Devil's Advocate (Score:2)
The cause I'm trying to prove is that I'm willing to pay fair prices, or do without. This isn't bread or water or even literature we are talking about, this is entertainment. There are dozens of ways to be entertained, so if one has an unfair pricing scheme than the moral road is to avoid it. Read a book. See a play. See an orchestra. Or even go back to the days when families would gather around pianos. But don't try to pass off not paying for entertainment as a means for anything other than not paying for entertainment.
In other, slightly related news... (Score:3, Informative)
Source: British Phonographic Industry [bpi.co.uk]
So sales haven't declined at all. I guess they just haven't risen as much as they hoped. At least in the UK, that is...
Just the facts, man. (Score:2)
Fully automatic small-caliber weapons are crap when it comes to hunting very large game or for home defense. Against very large game a fully automatic small-caliber weapon is going to have a very angry very large animal stomping on your head and in your home all it does it tear up your precious belongings and make a lot of noise.
They are not against the law, however, in the USA (ymmv in smaller communist countries and no I don't care.) They are documented and ownership requires a background check but Class III weapons (fully automatic small-caliber weapons) are legal to own by regular 'ol people assuming they follow the well defined transfer process and pay their $200 transfer tax.
The Civil War was way bloodier than the crap that happened during prohibition so I call bullshit on that aspect of the discussion too.
You are destroying any credibility the rest of your semi-accurate post may have by using these lies. Please stop, stick to the facts (the true ones) and the things you know. Like music piracy
Sum Mo Fax (Score:2, Informative)
Nope. Movies and special effects not-withstanding, an automatic small-caliber weapon will make a LOT of noise and will spray bullets all over the place, possibly hitting an intruder (possibly not) but not your best use of force. Submachine guns jump around too much for my preferences, good for keeping someone's head down but not something you want to use in your own home - it would be analogous to using a flamethrower : effective at scaring away the bad guys but bad for your belongings. Get a 12 gauge shotgun and alternate buckshot and slugs.
Want to prove it to yourself? Take a heavy duty 1 gallon plastic jug full of water to the range. A Borden's Milk Jug works and if you don't drink milk then a 3 liter Coke jug works. Full of water, with the cap screwed on tight.
Walk it out to the other side of the range.
Put 9mm round nose ammo into you SMG (the manufacturers recommend full metal jacket round nose for proper high speed feeding) and point in in the general direction of the jug and spray bullets. If you hit (not particularly easy at 50 feet) walk over to the still full jug and watch the water dribble out. Takes a while. When the jug is empty, that is how long a guy with a bullet in a good place will last. Hitting the jug more than once at 50 feet during a spray of 25 bullets off-hand is going to be magic or luck. People don't simply fall down and die when they get hit - people die / go down / stop hassling you due to : shock from combined blood loss and seeing their blood all over (could take a while), lack of oxyen to the brain (depending on the size and placement of the holes in his body could take a while), cut a nerve cord (spinal cord) that makes the bottom half go limp (not very likely unless you get real lucky.)
Take a new jug and shoot it with the 12 gauge slug. No gray area there, if you hit a 1 gallon jug full of water with a 12 gauge hollow point 1oz slug the shock value shatters the jug and sends little pieces in all directions and the water rains down for about 15 seconds. For good reason, the sound of a 12 gauge shotgun pump action racking a shell into the receiver translates correctly in every language on the planet
In home defense if you are going to shoot somebody, shoot to kill them. If they live they are going to a) sue you in court (and possibly win), or b) come back and shoot you because getting shot hurts like a MOFO.
>Automatic weapons are illegal because
Let me reiterate this. Automatic weapons are not illegal. Live near Austin, Texas? Give me a call and if you have a clean police record and $6,000 we can go buy you one. No joke. Not cheap, and it isn't cash and carry (there is a background check before the transfer goes through) but if you have $6,000 and a clean record you too can legally own a machine gun. Short-barrel shotgun too, if that is your fancy - it is called a Class II weapon and if you submit the proper paperwork it is also legal.
Note that it is against the law to possess a machine gun without the proper tax stamp (costs $200, for the record) that you can only get during the transfer of the weapon, but then again being in the possession of a car or a computer that you did not obtain in the proper legal manner is also illegal.
As for hunting big game with a submachine gun the hide of a rhino or elephant would stop 9mm bullets from doing much damage, fired from your normal H&K MP5 etc... Even if they penetrated the skin and muscle there would be slim chance of them doing enough massive damage to internal organs to stop them from coming over and destroying you before limping off into the forest to die four days later of blood loss.
>They may be inaccurate, but if I believe that they are true
Fair enough. I can find a better way to spread the truth than by diss'ing on you. I will work on that, sorry.
http://www.cox-internet.com/arielinc/MP5PI006.j
http://www.cox-internet.com/arielinc/MP5PI013.
http://www.cox-internet.com/arielinc/MP5PI020
http://www.cox-internet.com/arielinc/MP5PI02
Oh so off topic, and yet so informative. Mods would have a field day if we weren't hidden down so far
Another one that flops before it starts.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course when it goes down in flames they will blame it all on piracy and claim they offered an practical alternative.
Re:Another one that flops before it starts.... (Score:4, Interesting)
If they want it to work, it needs to be a flat rate, like $9.95 per month (in addition to your AOL membership) for all the unencumbered MP3s you can download. That would make the music downloaders happy and would give AOL a marketplace advantage in the ISP arena.
But nooooo, we're *so* afraid one naked MP3 might escape our grasp...
Emusic (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Emusic (Score:2)
But with all this discussion, now I'm likely to *remember* emusic.com when/if my connexion ever again doesn't suck. It sure would simplify finding "more songs by this here obscure artist".
(Please, ghu, let fixed wireless come this way in my lifetime -- it's my only hope!!)
Re:Emusic (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Emusic (Score:2)
Re:Another one that flops before it starts.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I respectfully disagree.
It seems to me that since AOL bills it's customers every month, via credit-card, they have a wonderful way to get around the problem of micro-payments.
They charge downloaded MP3's at 50p per-track, or whatever, with no subscription costs, and at the end of the month, add up all the 50p downloads, and stick it on the AOL credit-card charge.
£15.99 plus 12 MP3s @ 45p each = £15.99 + £5.40 = £21.39.
You get a detailed online bill, in your account details somewhere, with each track and cost, and you can buy a track as you feel like it, you don't have to pay any stupid subscription service, and the scheme is feasible since it doesn't incur the prohibitive credit-card payment the card company charges for using it's services, that would apply to small amounts: one big charge, inclusive of all micropayments.
What am I missing? It seems so simple, I've got to be missing something.
Re:Another one that flops before it starts.... (Score:4, Interesting)
People generally prefer "all you can eat for $9.95" to "only a quarter per carrot" and having to keep track of how many carrots they ate so they know how much the bill will be at the end of the month. Anyone with kids would be sure to get at least one $100 surprise bill!! And that would lead to a new requirement -- that subscribers be able to limit or more likely totally BLOCK the service (so their kids don't get out of hand).
See, the best way to get people to UNsubscribe from a service in droves is to surprise 'em with a higher bill than they expected. Remember how people fled from AOL at the first opportunity, back when flat-rate ISPs began supplanting AOL's pay-per-minute use fee?? Remember when 900 and 976 number blocking became mandatory in the U.S. because of "surprise bills" run up by people's kids?
Anyway, that's why I think flat-rate, all-you-can-download would go over better in the realworld marketplace, even if it wouldn't be as attractive to people who only want a few files per month. And it's a lot easier to advertise an "unlimited" service as being the greatest whizbang deal to ever come along.
Re:Another one that flops before it starts.... (Score:2)
I know there's no way in hell I'd sign up for a subscription music package. I'm selective in my music tastes & sometimes I won't want to buy any music, and I wouldn't want to pay for the privellege.
AOL has master screennames, and if there're parents with kids, master accounts can set restrictions on net usage. It wouldn't be too difficult to set up a maximum quota system ("Ok, Johnny, you've got £2.50, for music downloads") or require a parent to authenticate a child's purchase.
Something like that would seem to take care of the "unexpected bill" phenomenon.
Re:Another one that flops before it starts.... (Score:2)
Most people want to know how much a service will cost them, and would rather have a flat rate which they just assume they'll be able to use up. Look at how successful "$5/month long distance fee whether you use it or not, but it applies to your first nn-minutes of long distance" has been in the telephone service market. That's why all the big carriers do it. The market for pay-per-use exists there too, but it's relatively small.
When people have choice, they tend to go with the "set and forget" option, not the "gotta keep track" option. Pay per use tends to have a nuisance value in that you've got to manually confirm whether you were billed correctly.
As to quotas, while that could be done, kids will find ways around it (how many kids know mom's login ID and password? Lots, I'd bet, since more than likely the kid set up the account in the first place!!), and what kid wants their parents standing over them to authorize their download of the latest from Marilyn Manson?
Re:Another one that flops before it starts.... (Score:2)
Here's one thing the record industry hates about this. It breaks the bundling business model of selling 2-3 (arguably) good songs with 7-8 bad songs.
Say you listen to the radio, and in the course of a month hear 5 songs by different artists that you just can't live without. Presuming you have disposable entertainment income, you're going to spend $100 for 5 CDs that month.
With micropayments, now you're spending
Sure we can all come up with a million business models for e-music, but ultimately they all break the bundling that the record companies have managed to pull off for decades (or at least since album per-unit sales overcame 45 sales). What other industry (well, besides maybe cable TV) can you bundle 7-8 crappy pieces of a product with 2-3 highly desired pieces, and sell all 10 as a bundle?
Re:Another one that flops before it starts.... (Score:2, Insightful)
But you're right...of course, it'll All Be Down To Piracy.
They've done it again (Score:4, Funny)
Re:They've done it again (Score:2)
With that aside...
When AOL offers a service that lets me not only burn their complete library, coupled with unrestricted use of said songs for portables such as iPods... then... and only then... will they have a money-maker.
I bet there are thousands, if not millions, who would pay a monthly fee for that... especially if they knew they could have the song they're looking for, complete with a clean ID3 tag, all with a single click. They woudn't have to download five versions of the same song on Kazaa or Gnutella just to find one that isn't corrupted (on purpose... by you-know-who) or borked (due to user-error at the time of the rip).
I suppose the big record labels understand this, yet don't care. They're going to take this piecemeal approach to online music, giving an inch here and there... instead of going for what we all want, now.
God Bless American greed.
Usage Rights on burned CDs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Usage Rights on burned CDs? (Score:2)
Furthermore, are you allowed to listen to it, or only burn it?
Can anyone else in the same room also listen?
Not AGAIN!! (Score:5, Insightful)
To make this clear, first you PAY to download the music, then you PAY for the super fast net connection so you can get it this week, then you PAY to burn your own CD on your OWN time.
Yeah, I can see why consumers are going to love this idea.
I was a sub-sub contractor for a project like this that Sony wanted to do.
I spent days TRYING to talk them out of it.
They were convinced that the whole napster phenonminon proved that users wanted to burn their own CDs... not that it had ANYTHING to do with getting something for free.
CD's bought in a store are a convienence! The only convienience this gives me is that I don't have to buy a crappy song to get a good one. Yippie!
Re:Not AGAIN!! (Score:2)
B) When you download those mp3's on your own time, you are getting them for free, so some degree of inconvienience can be expected. (psheeta)
C) I don't really have a C, but ther's that whole rule of 3 thing...
Sounds Fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pay by the song will be interesting so long as the price point is sufficiently attractive ($0.25-$1 per song) as well as the conditions (physical PCM on the CD, no DRM bullshit).
Maybe they're sick of fighting us and actually want to give us what we want? How many people were saying they'd start buying music if they were given a chance?
Re:Sounds Fair... (Score:4, Interesting)
$18 for unlimited download and streams? DRMed music using AOL propriatory player?? 10 tracks a month to burn? using AOL propriatory burner? doesn't sound good to me at all
Note there is STILL NO PAY-PER BURN ability at the moment. How long have those services existed? A year? Two? Why is it that they have a fixed set of tracks-to-burn? Are they even aware that they are serving customers that might want... *gasp*... 11 tracks?
I, personally, *would* use a cheap mp3 service instead of gnutella... But it has to be mp3 (for my own players/burner...) and I fail to see why should I pay for priviledge of buying music from someone (i.e. monthly fee).
A Step In The Right Direction (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't be surprised if the RIAA either A. raises holy hell about how this will cut into their CD sales, or B. demands a goodly chunk of the revenue generated to compensate them for their perceived loss.
Re:A Step In The Right Direction (Score:2)
More seriously, though, this is another stillborn service. Paying $18 for 1CD of music (What if I want an albom that's got 11 tracks? WTF do I do??). and unlimited dowloads in some proprietary format... How could it be very successfull?
In another announcement (Score:4, Funny)
From the inside.... (Score:5, Funny)
THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS HAS CONVENED TO DISCUSS THEIR NEW ONLINE MUSIC STRATEGY.
AOL SUIT #1
So, the idea is this - we've already got subscribers, and the music people want subscribers, so lets turn OUR subscibers into THAT kind of subscribers! I'm frickin' brilliant!
AOL SUIT #2
But, what if they pirate the music they download? Can't they just play it out of their headphone jack, onto a MiniDisc, or basically anything else?
AOL SUIT #1 motions to the gorillas standing guard at the door. With a quick motion, AOL SUIT #2 is sent through a trap door under his chair. At the same time, his stock options are released from a hatch in the ceiling and all the other SUITS scramble to collect them.
AOL SUIT #1
Now, as I was saying...
FADE OUT
Re:From the inside.... (Score:3, Funny)
AOL SUIT #1: That's brilliant! I hereby promote you to CIO...
It's about time... (Score:5, Insightful)
AOL should have been doing this two years ago as a way to boost subscribers to AOL Broadband. AOL should be throwing as much "fat" content like this, and their movies libraries down the AOL Broadband pipe for as close to free as possible. Something needs to stop the upgrading to (other supplier) broadband hemoraging which is sweeping through their user base like ants when one discovers candy on the ground.
Really, they were very stupid for not doing this a long time ago. This is a lot of the reason they merged in the first place.
-Pete
Well, now we know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Who in their right fscking mind would pay $18 to burn 10 tracks? If i want to take it in the ass, i'll go and buy a cd for $18 in the store! Hell, it may have 12 tracks on it?
And, of course, the AOL 56k modem crowd is really looking forward to downloading music over 56k because that's not the 21st century's version of Chineese Water Torture.
Look - lets all be reasonable - the media companies are dead set against the internet as a form of distribution, because the old form of distribution is what they know, and makes them money by the truckload.
Do you blame them for selling (essentially) $.50 of materials for a markup of 3600%?? If i could shit in my hand and sell it for $5 a pop, you're damn right i'd be eating "Britanny Spears Bran Flakes" night and day too.
I swear to
Who's going to write books if everyone can get a copy for nothing?
The Brits have a term for people like this....
WANKERS!
Re:Well, now we know... (Score:3, Insightful)
Fortunatly for AOL most of their users are on it for one of several reasons. I will list the ones that I have seen most recently:
1. They want to connect w/o surcharge to a national ISP.
2. They don't know any better, dialup is what they have had since 1999 and DSL/Cable is foreign and/or too expensive for them.
3. They like keeping the same email address (why this bothers people I have absolutely no idea). They feel that it is a big hassle to email the 21 people on their addressbook to tell them that it has changed.
4. AOL users are just casual Internet users.
Re:Well, now we know... (Score:4, Interesting)
In the case of online music vs CD, there is a yet-to-be-determined increase of copied audio files (an increase that still has to reach its peak) but the price of the good has dropped to zero% of the original. That means a net profit of 0$. Coming from a billion dollar industry, that hurts and the folks behind that industry will fight with all their power to stop the evolution. (not that that will work in the long run)
the ONLY solution is if someone comes up with a busines model that gives profit for the salesmen side. Right now, the profit is all on customer side, so there is no money to be made business-wise.
To make the prob worse : I fear that there is NO profitable model ! Any model that requires payment is doomed because it can not compete with Kazaa-like stuff. Any model with encryption is doomed because any encryption can be broken. Hell, in the end you could connect your audio-out to your microphone and record the damd thing the good old analogue-way! (with no environment noise offcourse)
the issue is that the Internet has made any digitally duplicatable resource worthless, just as light bulbs made candles worthless (except for cuddly types) and CDs made vinyl worthless.
Re:Well, now we know... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've used services like kazaa quite a bit in the past, but I wouldn't if there was a good alternative service. By good, I mean it has to:
- Not be outrageously expensive (pay-per-track would make the most sense).
- Have a large library of songs. Even if it wasn't run by a group of record companies a very respectable library could be had if they just...
- Pay the artist (or their corporate masters in the case of major-label bands). I'm not going to pay a penny for a work of art if it doesn't benefit the artist.
I would probably subscribe to a service that meets those three points. I certainly like being able to get music for free off of kazaa, but it has some annoying limitations that an "official" service wouldn't - I can't always find what I want, when I do find something the file could be mislabled or severely corrupted or of poor quality, there's no uniform naming scheme, the id3 tags are frequently missing album info etc. With an official service you would always know what to expect. I think that is a *huge* incentive right there, as current p2p apps are crap when it comes to knowing what you're going to get.
DRM is another sticky issue of course. Any subscription service would be afraid all of the files they distribute would be vulnerable to further distribution after the initial download. There isn't any easy way around this that I'm aware of - either you have DRM and annoy the bejeezus out of the end user or don't and risk that someone will use the media in some infringing way. But there will always be risk in any business, that's part of the nature of capitalism - if someone else can do it better and for less you're in danger. There's no way any service can be cheaper than free obviously, so its the 'better' part that needs to be focused on. Make a service that is convenient and delivers exactly what the customer expects (and doesn't annoy the bejeezus out of them preferably), and you'll have plenty of business. People don't mind paying for things, they just hate throwing their money away.
Gah, that was a longer rant than I was expecting... back to work.
Re:Well, now we know... (Score:2)
$43 (Score:2)
Yeah, good idea... (Score:2)
I don't get it (Score:2)
2) Only to AOL subscribers? Does burning CDs from dialup connections make much sense? Wouldn't they have much better success selling this to broadband users? AFAIK AOL also have some kind of content-provider service for non-dialup users? (I don't live in the US, correct me if I'm wrong). Do they also provide the service for these customers? It would appear that they don't: Subscribers already pay $23.90 per month for dial-up Internet connections. So they're talking about only dialup users.
If this is (partly) an effort by AOL to keep people from migrating away from dialup, it seems futile to me.
so...doing some quick math (Score:2)
on the other hand, i pay 30 bucks a month for DSL (read: excellent) and get all the music i want...no strings attached hold on a second.....thinking.....alright, nope. still not worth it.
too little too late (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering that the majority of AOL's customers are on 56k dialup that actually gets connection speeds similar to 33.6, I don't really see how this is going to take off. $18 a month on top of the $25 people already pay for AOL isn't that good of a deal, you might as well start buying cd's again. Broadband + kazaa is cheaper than aol + aol's music service and is definitly more unlimited than anything aol can come out with.
Re:too little too late (Score:2, Interesting)
Dear AOL-Time-Warner, (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody is going to pay $18 bucks a month to download and burn 10 songs. You need to offer 100 or 1000 (or unlimited downloads) for $18 a month. "But!", you say, "That's not profitable! We won't make any money!"
Right, you won't make any money because you haven't thrown out the OLD system yet. These two ways of doing business are mutually exclusive. Either you're selling CD's, or your selling the rights to listen to music. You can't do both. Right now, you spend millions a year on production and distribution...so much money in fact that you have to charge $18 for 10 songs (be it in CD format or downloadable format).
The solution is CUT COSTS. Stop spending millions a year on pressing and distributing CD's and just put everything in an online library. It's just that simple. Then you can offer more because it costs less to produce. Then people will buy...but not until you make the leap.
Re:Dear AOL-Time-Warner, (Score:3, Insightful)
Problem is, these poorer folks still spend money on entertainment. My kid sister held a job at a movie theater about a year back and she always had to deal with people who were angry that the movie theatre didn't advertise showtimes in the paper everyday. She'd tell them to just check the website for showtimes and she got a lot of (often angry) responses that some people don't have money to spend on "the Internet".
There's still a digital divide, people, no matter how much we'd like to think otherwise. Until everyone who listens to music is online, then ceasing the production of CDs makes no business sense.
Re:Dear AOL-Time-Warner, (Score:2, Informative)
Read the article. The $18 price includes unlimited downloads as well as 10 burns per month. If you just want the unlimited downloads, it's only $9 per month. So the burn price is $0.90 per track.
This means the AOL subscriber can listen to everything, indefinitely, on their home computer and only buy the stuff they truly like. It's the ultimate try before you buy program. Heard the new ________ album? Go get it! Listen to it... decide it sucks, go download another! And then you can burn a compilation CD of your favorites.
I do the same thing with my X-Box Magazine subscription (~$2 per month, but includes those damn pop-up ads
Yea, there's still Kazaa, but I turned off sharing with other users a long time ago because I don't want to become an RIAA case study.
Monthly fees (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll pay $1 a song, but I will not subscribe to any more services. It adds up quickly.
Paralysis by Analysis (Score:2, Interesting)
Smart plan, like Mac Shareware (Score:2)
There are many things that I'll buy for $5-$10 when I'm in a store, but online it's a pain. I have to fish out my credit card, fill out a form, etc. If I'm an AOL user (and I actually am, it's the easiest dialup solution for when I'm out of town, despite only getting used 4-8 times a year), paying an extra couple of bucks on the same account isn't too bad an idea.
Remember, you don't have to initiate a new transfer, you just have to sign up. Also, you need to understand the scale.... get a mere 1 million signups (impossible for most dot-coms, probably not unreasonable for AOL), and you're making another $10m-$20m a month off your subscribers.
AOL users pay a premium for AOL. There is no reason to believe that they won't pay a premium for a music service that is as easy to use as AOL.
Alex
AOL/RIAA vs Napster (Score:2)
Didn't the RIAA refuse to allow Napster to proceed when they proposed a nearly identical business model?
Man, this stinks.
Info from a current user of AOL MusicNet (Score:2, Informative)
The value of MusicNet (Score:2)
What AOL is attempting to do is to set up their ISP service and their music service as complementary products.
Will it be successful? Most likely, because A) they already have a huge catalog of music that they can use, and B) a lot of people will sign up for AOL just to use MusicNet, so AOL gets to hit them with two subscription fees, not just one.
It's an interesting idea, although, as a consumer, I don't like the restrictions on the music they place and probably wouldn't subscribe to it, myself.
Really Queer Strategy (Score:2, Informative)
In Canada I pay about $17.95 (+15% tax) for an entire CD (usually more than 10 tracks!) and I don't have to pay for an extra CD to burn it. At the current conversion rate this works out to about $29 CDN for ONE CD. There is no way this scheme should be attractive to anyone. Advice to all: Don't buy it, AOL will just have wasted their money investing in a huge online service that is ultimately designed to go to shambles. Unless, of course, they significantly lower the price; at which point if I was silly enough to join AOL, I may consider it.
I wish I had the smarts to work at AOL.
8|
let me guess... (Score:2)
I wonder what'd happen if someone actually tried to bring hardcore DRM to the Mac? Audible.com comes close but the rights management is completely transparent until you try to burn a file to disk more than once (there are, of course, work-arounds), and they incorporated iTunes integration with apple's help. Anything else I think is pretty much set up to fail (anyone remember liquid audio?)
Triv
A REAL music service (Score:5, Informative)
Its cheaper than this AOL crap, and allows unlimited downloads and unrestricted use of the music.
The downside is that it doesn't have Top 40 type stuff, and all files are 128kB/s, but they got tons of good music if you're willing to dig a little. (It helps if you're into jazz and/or punk).
I just wanted to bring them up as an example of a site doing it right, and worth checking out. I signed up not on principle, but because they had a bunch of albums I wanted.
Meet the Basic Requirements of Consumers! (Score:5, Insightful)
If your going to provide a pay service, it must be in a standard format. MP3 is the current standard, and if it is not in MP3, it will go under. With this current strategy, Musicnet users can only play downloaded tracks through AOL! The CD burning feature is such a joke, 10 tracks? 10 tracks, considering the average song length is not enough to fill a 74 minute CD.
The most ridiculous part about this whole service is the requirement of an AOL subscription. So in order to use this service a prospective customer needs to pay $25/month for an AOL subscription and $18/month for unlimited downloads of a DRM crippled format and the ability to burn 10 tracks. So for $43, users can download low quality, DRM crippled songs from a 56k modem, and every month they can burn half of a mix CD with 10 tracks!
I've said it before and I will repeat it again, because apparently nobody at AOL/TW reads /. If you are going to charge for a service, any service whether it is downloadable music, catering, or blowjobs in a cheap motel, you need to meet the basic needs of your potential customers.
allofmp3 (Score:3, Informative)
Emusic rocks my world (Score:2, Informative)
Emusic [emusic.com] has unlimited downloads of excellent indie, electronic, blues, jazz and classical
They have the entire Matador catalog, and oodles and oodles of other off-center selections. The first few days I was subscribed I downloaded 2 gigs of stuff and felt faint and woozy with music lust.
There's no Britney or Zeppelin, but who cares? If you're a Slashdot reader you probably have offbeat tastes, so go dig in!
When FreeP2P will fail (Score:2, Insightful)
That old system is idiotic, and the entire way that the music industry does business will change. No longer will they sell albums at huge rates like we see today. If they want to survive, they will have to sell each track individually and to keep the 'album system' intact, they will have to have the price of albums significantly lower than those of the combined prices of the tracks on that album. As it is, there is no reason why a soundtrack should cost more than the movie itself, as there are obviously no development or research involved in either of the medium, there is virtually no cost to produce either medium, and the content on the DVD is greater than on the CD. Yet the RIAA blames their slumping sales *completely* on piracy.
While these are not by any means new arguments, the industry just doesn't seem to be getting the picture. By offering services like these to "cater" to your average Joe KaZaA user, they are simply outlining the fact that they don't understand why KaZaA is so successful. It offers what users want at low rates (in this case free), and for the industry to compete with that price, they will simply have to offer a better product, and people will pay for it, *somewhat* like the idea of open source.
listen.com (Score:5, Interesting)
They typically charge $1 per song to burn, but have an offer going through March 31 to charge $0.49 per song. This seems to be the pricing point that folks on Slashdot have been claiming they would support. I plan to burn a few CDs just to show my support.
Also, when I had problems getting their new software to work through my University's firewall, a developer worked diligently with me through email before finally sending me a patch to test. It worked great and ended up being included in the next release. It was a level of support I don't encounter with software much anymore.
I'm not affiliated with listen.com, but I do endorse them and I seriously doubt AOL/Time Warner will be able to match up.
Re:listen.com (Score:2)
regardless, I did indeed mean album rather than CD
Re:listen.com (Score:2)
Bulk Discount? (Score:2)
So, lets assume that I was given access to a library of thousands of cd's. I could have copied them all, sure. Instead, I listened to what was of interest, then later made an effort to pick up a copy when I decided that it would make a good addition to my library.
I don't want it all for free, but why not drop prices online to the point that I can download several albums for a few bucks. If I like it enough, sure, I'll go buy the CD. If it is a waste of my time, don't worry, it will be deleted soon.
Picking up a CD that you haven't heard before is such a gamble these days. At current prices, it is hardly worth the risk.
-S
When will they learn (Score:2, Insightful)
Intresting link with a good all round look at the DRM vrs Fair Use issue. Peronally I don't think the companies get it. They need to get back in touch with the fact that the customer is always right. Right now the customers who have braod band access are thumbing their collective noses at the music industry because the industry is thumbing their noses at them. Get with the times folks, your hoarding bronze weapons when steel is on the market.
In regards to this joke of a music service being offered I have this to say. As long as they are going to practice highway robbery there will be pirates aplenty. Pave a 6 lane highway with no speed bumps and you might be amazed how many people are willing to pay to use it. You know this service reminds me of the end of Blazing saddles where they put up the Toll booth on the prarie only they expect it to work in real life.
You can't sell what's already free... (Score:2, Insightful)
Music Match MX is the best I tried (Score:4, Informative)
Music Match MX, I think, uses MP3pro instead of Mp3. That probably explains the good quality. If you select CD quality for MX, the sound quality satisfies me. I am usually satisfied with 256kbit Mp3's minimum.
MX Gold ($3/mon) gives you something like a radio, you select an artist and listen to similar artists. You can skip songs if you want. Great for new music discovery. But MX also has a Artist on Demand feature if you buy the platinum service ($5/month). So you can only listen to songs from one or more groups. You don't get to select the songs, but you can skip to the next song if you want. Usually first songs are the popular ones.
You can create your radio stations based on artists, era, genre, and select the weighting of these. The system works great for me.
Music subscription economics (Score:5, Informative)
The current "on-demand" subscription services (the major ones being Pressplay, MusicNet, Listen.com's Rhapsody) all have licenses from all 5 major labels plus a number of indies that allow them to do the following:
- on-demand streaming (e.g., search for a track and stream it)
- tethered downloads - DRM'd downloads that can only be played on the PC they were downloaded to
- burnable/portable downloads
The licenses from the labels generally require the subscription service to pay a small fee (say, 0.2 cents) for each song streamed or each time a tethered download is played. Each time a portable/burnable download is purchased, the label gets about 50 cents. The music publisher gets an additional fee of roughly 8.5 cents.The prices now are all about $9 to $10 per month for unlimited streams and tethered downloads plus about $1 per track for burnable/portable downloads. Rhapsody and MusicNet currently don't offer transfers to portable players, only burns, but of course you can rip to MP3 after burning.
Currently the selection is variable, with some albums or tracks not available at all, some only available for streaming/tethered downloads but not for burning, etc., but the selection has been steadily improving over time. For example the current no. 1 album by 50 Cent is available on all of the services, and is available for burning. The Norah Jones album that just won 8 Grammys is as well. Some artists like Dave Matthews, Madonna, Metallica and the Beatles own their own digital rights and have not allowed their music to be made available on the subscription services yet.
Another issue affecting availablility is publishing rights - the subscription services need to make deals with publishers representing songwriters in addition to the artist or label who controls the master (recording) rights. In many cases this is why only certain tracks on an album may be available.
A business model that people might actually like (Score:5, Interesting)
Offer a music service that, either for free, or for a fixed price, allows you to download all the songs you want, from fixed servers or from other peers, in some compressed format.
Provide software or a web site that allows you to easily design a "mix" CD, based on either songs you already have on MP3, or lists of songs that you don't have from a catalog.
Once you've selected up to 80 minutes of music to fill your mix CD, you design the CD label. You can pick from a template, or upload your own disc art. You can also design your own template. More on that below.
Then you select "purchase" to order a custom CD.
o The custom CD is burned to a CDR, using full resolution, uncompressed WAV files.
o The CDR is printed on a high-resolution full color inkjet or dye sublimation printer, using the disc art that you selected or designed.
o The CDR is placed in a white sleeve, and mailed to you.
The cost would be say, $11.95 per disc plus $5.00 fixed shipping and handling charges no matter how many discs you place in a single order. Keeping the per-disc cost low and the fixed charge high is advantageous, as it would encourage larger orders.
This way, you could use the P2P system to "sample" and explore music, and find the music you really like, then order an uncompromised, top notch, attractive product:
1) The music you really like in uncompressed format -- the same bitstream as the original CD, as opposed to lossy MP3s.
2) Attractive, highly professional custom-printed CDRs with zero effort, instead of piles of hand-labelled CDs.
The "user community" would be built around bulletin boards, mix lists and disc art. Once you had paid to burn a CDR, you could opt to save and publically "publish" your mix list and disc art, so that other people could make identical copies of your mix CD by clicking a "purchase" button. You could also upload your own cover art templates that could be used to print any track list. There would be no way to download other people's disc art -- the only way to get it would be to have a CDR custom burned. This would create an additional incentive to use the pay service. There would be a system for people to rate and rank mix CDs and cover art, and a regularly published top 100 list. You could set up a system where if 1000 people use your mix list or disc art, you get a free CD, thus encouraging people to put a lot of time and effort into coming up with really good track lists and sick disc art.
It seems like it would be fun to me. Sound like a good time? Would people pay for that?
Article Incomplete - Cost not $18 (Score:3, Informative)
"In the next few weeks, AOL is going to introduce an improved $15-a-month service, with a bundle of content and services meant for people who already buy broadband connections from their cable or telephone companies. That offering will include a limited version of MusicNet that will let users download 20 songs a month and listen to another 20 one time."
For those who don't want the regular AOL, "for $8.95 a month, users will be able to listen to a catalog of music, now at 250,000 songs and growing, on their computers... The standard $8.95 version of the service will allow users to listen to an unlimited number of songs on demand
The premium service is $17.95 and allows the burning of 10 songs a month in addition to unlimited listening.
Strictly for the already assimilated (Score:2)
(And once they sign up, AOL will make it actually impossible to cancel the service. Naturally.)
Do these companies have no idea at all how people use Gnutella right now? Do they not do any research? Everything they offer us seems to be a business model designed around their needs, not around us as customers. We've all figured out that we don't want to subscribe to Columbia Records by now, so let's drop the stupid monthly fees: people will pay by the song, you'll make loads of money, so get it through your heads and give us what we plainly want...
Silliness (Score:2)
That's a lot like Tommy Hilfiger forcing customers to wear T.H. pants before entering their store, isn't it?
Re:Unlimited downloads, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, they let you burn anything you want, but stop you from downloading them.
AOL at 56 Kbps for MP3 downloads? And booked as a pay service? Maybe they'll get granny to believe she has broadband now that she can download music...
*scoove*
Re:Unlimited downloads, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Unlimited downloads, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway this is al speculation. That is what has happened in the past with other subscription services, though. You get the files as a .AOM (American Online music) file or something that is encrypted.
Re:Unlimited downloads, but... (Score:2)
If the selection were just a little bit better, I would be happy with paying $9.95 for music this way. The sound quality is excellent, and the convenience is worth it... but of course I'm an old geezer who sits in front of his box all day. If you listen to newer stuff or are on the go then buying/pirating is probably you're best option.
Selection? AOL/TW signed artists, who else! (Score:3, Informative)
As opposed to Rhapsody (which I haven't tried), emusic has a great selection and uses the MP3 format, but 128kbps is not good enough for me.
Re:Selection? AOL/TW signed artists, who else! (Score:2)
Re:Unlimited downloads, but... (Score:2)
WMA (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sounds like AOL is screwed (Score:2)
Re:ACTUALLY... (Score:3, Informative)
1.download from AOL.
2. Burn to CD with nero.
Re:ACTUALLY... (Score:2)
That would provide an ability to sample the music and figure out what you'd like, but would still have people going through AOL to get their custom CDs.
Re:$18 a month for 10 songs??? (Score:2)
Filler songs isn't the problem, it's the fact that there ARE "hits"... I understand that some songs will be more liked than others, but to push singles is a damn shame. either put out a sing or put out an entire record... don't half ass it.
Re:Money (Score:2)
Re:Is it for AOLTW labels only? (Score:2)
By the way they haven't "partnered with the RIAA" for this, they've made deals with individual labels. The RIAA is a trade organization that lobbies for the music industry, they don't license music.
Re:would someone explain to me... (Score:2)
In addition, one could implement a proprietary format and player, although that still leaves certain hardware hacks possible.