Downloading music vs subscriptions

I'd like to get you's guys' take on something. This is turning out to be like one of the Great Mysteries of the World to me.

I was just reading that Coldplay is breaking records for the most downloads of their album, more than any other album to date, that is. Good for them, but there are other online ways to hear their music.

As I mentioned I was going to do on another thread, I just got a subscription to Rhapsody.com. So for $12.99 a month, I can listen to any album in their library (and their library is actually quite respectable—they have all three Ultimate Spinach albums, for instance, which is saying something). A virtually unlimited music collection. Manna from heaven!

So the Rhapsody subscription price per month is almost the cost of the Coldplay download. As long as you were to download at least two albums a month on another service, Rhapsody beats downloading hands down every time. So why don't people go the subscription route instead? Are they really only downloading the equivalent of $13 or less per month?

I've been totally groovin' to Rhapsody over the last week or so. It's the best technology since XM Radio, as far as I'm concerned. Gotta love our technological advances!

Are you ever undecided about springing for a back catalog album of a band you like a lot? For instance, you know you love all the Cure albums from the mid-80s forward and you've been curious about the previous ones but never bought them?

You love the Smiths' Queen is Dead album and have been wanting to check out their other albums but wanted to save your money instead?

So now you know you love John Lennon because of all the cool covers you've heard of his (like Working Class Hero), but haven't gotten around to buying Lennon's own stuff? Not a problem if you subscribe to Rhapsody. You can hear them all and more. And save them to your very own library in Rhapsody's space. And Rhapsody is not paying me to rave about them!

Oh Happy Day! Speaking of which, I think I'll have Rhapsody fire up that very song "Oh Happy Day" which was a semi-hit in the 1960's!

you . . . bastard . . . must . . . hold . . . on . . . this . . . actually . . . sounds . . . interesting.

must go wallow naked in a pile of cds to recharge.

Are you saying that for 12 bucks a month one can download in unlimited quantity? Or is it that you can only listen to all of these albums. Which means tethering oneself to a computer.

Ah, "tethering oneself to one's computer"! See my other thread on this very subject of hearing Rhapsody.com music on other platforms besides computers. The topic title was "Online radio/subscription svcs/home devices" and I think it's on page 3 now.

Yes, you "only" listen to these albums, but since you can save them to your library and hear them elsewhere, I see no difference versus "downloading." For the record, you can buy MP3s as well on Rhapsody, but I don't see the point.

To sum: Yes, you can most certainly hear everything Rhapsody offers on your $5,000 ear-shattering living room stereo, in your car via your IPod, your IPod itself, etc.

shareminer

Er…I thought Rhapsody subscriptions weren't compatible with iPods, only with other players like the Samsung line? And that this is a big reason subscriptions in general hasn't taken off, since most have iPods and would want to listen to their music on their portable of choice.

The major theoretical downside to the model is that you never actually own the album - it's a lease model. If your subscription were to end or Rhapsody were to go out of business, you are left with nothing.

The practical downside is navigating the DRM restrictions across multiple devices. Since you can never burn it to a media (which I think is a good thing), you are always tied to a device (as you stated earlier). Different devices from different manufacturers leaves you working across platforms - some that work and some that don't.

I did the Napster lease model when it first came out and it proved to be difficult with my Napster Player, my wife's iPod and an xbox 360.

I think you're right, Bellenseb, that Rhapsody only interfaces (is that the word?) with certain IPods. But that's not much of an issue for me since I don't even own an IPod and don't have much interest in them.

I don't care for listening to music via any kind of headphone/ear device. Kinda claustrophic, or something, for me. I like being able to hear everything else going on in the room, or outside, whatever.

I'm old fashioned, I guess, in that I love to listen to music loud and proud on my home stereo while I'm doing other stuff like getting ready for work, unwinding, reading, web surfing, etc.

So Vansmack, we're no more "tied to a device" than we would be if we were listening to a retail CD, album or cassette.

Originally posted by OscarTheWilde:
So Vansmack, we're no more "tied to a device" than we would be if we were listening to a retail CD, album or cassette.

When you bought a CD you could play that CD in EVERY CD player you owned. It worked in your computer's CD-ROM, it worked in your car's CD player, it worked in your stereo's CD player. It even worked in your discman and your friends and family's CD players. Same for a cassette.

The same is not true for digital files. When you buy a digital file, you are not guaranteed that it works in EVERY digital music player you have, and it's even less likely that it works in your friends and family's digital music players. Far from it actually.

It was one thing to be tied to a "CD player," but it's something totally different to be tied to a digital music player that supports the XXX codec. How an already struggling industry can take something is supposed to make listening to music much more convenient and make it much more confusing is beyond me.

Originally posted by OscarTheWilde:
I think you're right, Bellenseb, that Rhapsody only interfaces (is that the word?) with certain IPods.

Rhapsody is not supported by any iPod (the subscription model at least). Rhapsody uses "PlayforSure" DRM while Apple uses "FairPlay" DRM. The algorythms are completely different.

There are work arounds of course, and those work until a new software update comes out and you're back to square one.

Originally posted by vansmack:
When you bought a CD you could play that CD in EVERY CD player you owned. It worked in your computer's CD-ROM, it worked in your car's CD player, it worked in your stereo's CD player. It even worked in your discman and your friends and family's CD players. Same for a cassette.

The same is not true for digital files. When you buy a digital file, you are not guaranteed that it works in EVERY digital music player you have, and it's even less likely that it works in your friends and family's digital music players. Far from it actually.

It was one thing to be tied to a "CD player," but it's something totally different to be tied to a digital music player that supports the XXX codec. How an already struggling industry can take something is supposed to make listening to music much more convenient and make it much more confusing is beyond me.

This is exactly why I haven't jumped on this ipod thing yet. When I up and moved to the UK for half a year back in '05 I got a creative zen mp3 player. Mostly because I wanted to bring along all those mp3's that were on my computer (from back in the halcyon days of napster being free) w/o having to burn them all onto cd's and lug around said cd's. However I've rarely used the thing since then and have continued to buy cd's. Whatever subscription I eventually get, I'd like to be able to use it on a portable device, to be able to play it in my car, and hell, even play it on a boombox outdoors while camping etc. The only way I know I can do all of this and more reliably is cd's still. Plus I want to make mix compilations to give to friends. Not possible w/ DRM ridden files.

Point taken, Van. I guess a CD is more portable than a digital file, but the original discussion here centered on a comparison between subscription services and downloading music, so a CD is not involved in either of those situations (unless one wants to burn to a CD, of course, but let's assume not for this epistle).

Also a good point that Rhapsody could go out of business or my subscription otherwise expire and I'd be left with nothing. That would bite. But hopefully a couple of things would precede Rhapsody's demise: They'd tell us in advance, in which case we could just switch to Napster, which is similar (but they have less prog rock than Rhapsody), or another bigger better subscription service would be up and running, perhaps even subsuming Rhapsody.

And isn't it true that if one downloads music from, say, iTunes to one's computer that all that music has to be transferred to each successive computer and that it could also be lost forevermore if the computer were to crash?

As for the portability of Rhapsody, I think it is more portable than what's being conveyed here. Again, I'm only interested in playing it on my home stereo, but I seem to recall seeing on their website that if you buy their iPod (or equivalent) you can play tunes from your Rhapsody personal library anywhere, including cars and boom boxes equipped to take iPods or their equivalent.

Originally posted by OscarTheWilde:
As for the portability of Rhapsody, I think it is more portable than what's being conveyed here. Again, I'm only interested in playing it on my home stereo, but I seem to recall seeing on their website that if you buy their iPod (or equivalent) you can play tunes from your Rhapsody personal library anywhere, including cars and boom boxes equipped to take iPods or their equivalent.

First, Rhapsody is not going out of business anytime soon. I have a couple friends who work for Rhapsody and they say the only thing that could bring them down is if the Digital Music world were to adopt FairPlay as the standard for Digital Music (the way the CD technology was developed by Sony and they made royalties on every CD bought and made) and Apple were to price them out. Very little chance of that happening.

That notwithstanding, there are diffent types of Rhapsody services:

Rhapsody 25: 25 free streaming songs a month. Anyone can sign up.

Rhapsody Unlimited: Unlimited Streaming ($13 a month). Requires an internet connection wherever you wish to listen to music.

Rhapsody to Go ($15): Same as the Napster model. I can download, but not burn, the entire collection. Every month I must have an internet connection to renew my license with Rhapsody. This also requires me to plug my portable player into my system to renew my license once a month, otherwise, I can't play the DRM songs. Sucks when this happens on a plane, say….

Rhapsody store: Purchase songs from Rhapsody store for ~$.89 per song. Depending on the Label, some are DRM free, some have DRM. Any song that is DRM free can be played on any portable device that supports the type of file you downloaded. The DRM songs require your deivce to support the Rhapsody DRM.

OK. So some DRM free songs will work on an iPod. Rhapsody spent a considerable amount of time making the Rhapsody DRM work on the iPod. Apple then updated their software to block the DRM. A fight ensued where Rhapsody accused Apple of not playing along. Apple accused Rhapsody of hacking and also not playing along. Apple threatened to sue and now Rhapsody DRM is not supported by Apple.

So to play with iTunes you need an iPod. To play with Rhaposdy, you need a Windows Media based player. You were right on when you said that A CD is more "portable" than digital music these days. Sad but true. You have to decide to tie your entire music collection, including devices to one "system" and you are guaranteed to run into problems with exclusivity between labels.

MP3 without DRM are more "portable" than a CD as they can be played on iPods, Zens, Zunes, etc, etc…

Sites like Rhapsody and Napster essenital rent music which is why they need to put the DRM restrictions in place and why they are tied to anything but iPods at this point. Apple hasn't adopted a subscription service and I don't see them ever doing that anytime soon.

I subscribe to eMusic which for me is more useful than XM radio. For a monthly fee I get a set number of DRM free downloads, which are mine to keep will never expire etc. Can be easily played on an iPod, Zen, loaded on flash drive, etc. I can listen to them on my schedule. Of course eMusic doesn't have any current major label artists on them, but a number of former major label artists have re-released their stuff on indie labels. I find plenty of worthwhile stuff to download on a monthly basis. Even some who like indie music find it's selection limited. If you are looking for mainstream top 40 crap like Linkin Park forget about…

There are progressive rock acts available for download on eMusic. Note: the eMusic isn't the most reliable for categorizing artists.

http://www.emusic.com/browse/0/b/-dbm/a/0-0/1200000485/0.html

my initial thought… do you work for Rhaposdy?

anyway, I've contemplated the subscription route many times, but it always goes back to the fact I just like to "own" the album. I use emusic and amazon to download music due mostly to the fact that the files are DRM free.

Another service that might be on interest is lala.com

I use to be a huge supporter of the site when it was the premiere cd trading site, but have a hard time recommending as a place to trade cds at the moment. The recent site update was made to emphasis the digital music download and listening aspect and took the focus off CD trading. Trading in general is going very slowly at the moment for many traders.

I mention it because without a monthly subscription one can listen once for free to any full length track available. After that you can build up a streaming library for 10 cents a track with a discount for buying the rights to stream the entire album.

They also sell DRM free MP3s at prices and similar sound quality to Amazon.

Kosmo and I agree on a lot of this stuff and have gone over and over our frustrations with DRM, and more importantly, competing DRMs. Since neither side is going to open them up, there's no solution in sight.

I don't use the subscription services because (1) I don't always have an internet connection and (2) we have devices that are cross-platform (iPods, Windows servers, Xbox 360).

I always try to purchase and download DRM free music, but those are hard to come by. I used eMusic for a while because I liked the concept. But I found myself trying out new music that sucked (that model doesn't make sense) or simply purchasing a lot of crap simply because I had credits. When I stopped doing that the credits piled up.

It's gotten to the point where I try to find a DRM free version of music that I want and if I can't get it, I steal it from a bit torrent site. Stealing isn't my preferred option, but I won't let the industry lock me down to one standard when they can't even decide among themselves which standard to adopt. It's simply not fair to the consumer.

OTW,

Don't get me wrong I have nothing against Napster or Rhapsody they offer a perfectly fine service. However, I listen to most of my music at work and as such avoid using music streaming sites, which maybe blocked anyways At home I tend to watch movies and play video games more.

Having become a Apple computer user those services aren't of much use to me. And beside I already have enough legal content, so that a subscription to one of sites would just become under underutilized. Sort of like my subscription to HBO. I know it's there just not always enough compelling content to watch on it every once in awhile.

Now if I could figure out how to get a Napster UK account working in the US, then I'd rethink that notion :D

Oh and speaking of content restrictions, a friend visiting from the UK is able to use the new BBC download service here, but we can't even sign up for it yet in the US. hmmm…

and yet the cds i have here, play just fine in the uk and vice verse. double hmmm . . .