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Are Free File Download Services Really Safe
On Monday June 27, 2005 the Supreme Court ruled that Grokster and Streamsoft, two free file download services, were operating illegally because they were allegedly encouraging illegal downloads of copyrighted material. Encouraging it...that...
Entering the world of digital audio - how to make the most of MP3 downloads
By Carol Finch of:
http://www.mp3-players-n-reviews.com
Some industry experts claim that the increasingly wide availability of MP3 downloads is showing signs of taking over the way that we buy and listen to the music that we love. The days of the...
Find the best downloads online
Oh, we all know that we can download a load of free stuff from the Internet easily. But the best downloads are the ones that DON'T come with 'extra' features like viruses, worms, adwares, spywares, whathaveyounots. It's the truth. When you download...
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As a shareware download site webmaster I have some suggestions for the shareware authors out there that submit their programs to download sites. I spend many hours a week reviewing submissions submitted to my site and cannot believe that lack of...
How Do You Find Sheet Music Downloads Today?
Music is a piece of entertainment that is in society’s daily life consistently. It doesn’t matter whether it is Rock and Roll, Gospel and Christian music, or jazz, people listen to music for a variety of reasons. However, today there are...
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Say bye-bye to Illegal music downloads?
Both Napster and Microsoft Music Service are working on new way to get customers to download music file to their iPod and otherportable mp3 players for less than $1 per song. Actually, significantly less. Both of these music service are working on a way allow customers to downloads as much music as they want as long as it goes directly to an iPod or similar portable music player.
This is great news for customers who still think $1 per song is too steep. Although the price model words for one song, 10 songs or even 100 songs, it starts getting outrageous when you go by factors of ten. If an iPod holds 10,000 songs and you want to fill it up, you would have to spend $10,000. Most people can fill up the iPod in less than a year.
Unfortunately, they probably won’t spend $10,000 on music, in any single year. So, what you could have is a legal product, the iPod, being used to hold thousands of illegal songs because the space is there. (assuming the iPod would be open later on to all mp3 formats.)
Napster has a workaround
Napster is the first to announce that it is working on a subscription model that would allow it’s user to pay a cheap subscription fee with no restrictions on how many songs they can download. By their estimates, a user can probably download 10,000 songs for about $180. Unfortunately, the Napster system does not work with the iPod so customers can only take advantage of this offer if they purchase either of two Napster approved portable mp3 players.
The Microsoft model would also allow customers to
download a significant number of files for less than the average cost of $1 per song. Microsoft is another company that is also locked out of the iPod. They will distribute the songs via Microsoft approved portable mp3 players.
This new pricing model is radical change for the digital music industry. This came about because the success of iTunes has highlighted all that is good and bad about the ways music is sold online.
It shows that customers will buy online and they will browse through digital catalogs for individual songs rather than entire albums. But, it also shows that a lot of work needs to be done to make the mp3 security codes and portable players more compatible. If Apple continues to dominate the portable mp3 player market with the iPod, then customers will only have three choices:
1. Subscribe through iTunes because they want the iPod
2. Hack the iPod which Real Network is doing already
3. Or, ignore the most reliable portable mp3 player out there and deal with having a few files on their computers or on another less prominent player.
This is all great news for digital music fans, but we’ll have to wait and see how the recording industry responds to this cheap-for-all music model.
Is it sufficient to bring back the revenue streams that songwriters and singers have been losing to totally free services such as Kazaa and Grokster? No one knows.
About the Author
This article may be freely distributed as long as there's an active link to http://www.rapidlingo.com
Syd Johnson
Editor
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