Buying music online is no longer just for those with guilty consciences. As users fear lawsuits stemming from sharing copyrighted music, and as the peer-to-peer software industry gets bloated with annoying spyware, pay-for-play is becoming more commonplace.
Napster and iTunes offer 99 cent downloads, but MusicRebellion.com has got them beat big time right now by offering up over 100,000 songs for 10 cents per download.
Since the parent company, Digonex Technologies, Inc., is losing money on each transaction, the cheap price lasts until the budget allotted for this campaign is exhausted. Then it goes back to the intended pricing model, which is based on demand of each song (expected to rise to about 50 to 70 cents each).
Setting up an account and depositing $5 from PayPal was a snap. The search function didn't work well at first — maybe the load was too heavy — so it was a bit frustrating having to browse alphabeticaly through genres. But almost everything I looked for was there. The soundtrack to Movin' Out on Broadway, Simon & Garfunkel, Bruce Springsteen, Barenaked Ladies, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lyle Lovett. Even got me the whole Bon Jovi debut album for 90 cents, downloadable in one fell swoop at 38MB.
Everything I have downloaded has been in Windows Media Audio, with little restrictions on burning to a CD (only 10 times per song) and with full license to transfer to a portable audio player. iPod, which has come out with a "mini" version, does not support WMA, but devices offered by Dell and Napster do. CNET has the scoop on portable audio devices on the market.
At 10 cents a clip, MusicRebellion.com has offered a great deal even if you don't have a portable audio player but enjoy playing music on your computer. And it will be interesting to see how the pricing-on-demand model shakes out for such a huge industry, since many predict that is the future of e-commerce.
In Five Words or Less: Do it before campaign ends
99 cents/download is *way* too much, especially since it tends to come with restrictions. For a buck per song, I want to be able to do what I want with it.
50 cents/download sounds much better, although I still think even that's a bit high. If/when artists are able, en masse, to hold onto their copyrights and skip the recording contracts that benefit the record companies, we might see cheaper downloads because of decreased costs on the other side.
I don't know if we'll ever see that day, though.
Posted by bhw at January 9, 2004 10:20 PM