In response to Yasmín's comment to the post below: Fair use doesn't enter into this, because in this case, you never owned the music in the first place. You're simply being given a blanket license to play music on your personal equipment. I'm not saying it's an ideal copyright situation. I realize that there's no ownership.
What I am saying is... they're throwing in a 5 gig music player that also displays pictures, has a built in voice recorder, and USB 2.0 for fast transfers. (Me Likey the iRiver).
Also, it's an easy (maybe too easy) solution for parents or grandparents who are worried that their kid might be filesharing and who knows when that subpoena from the RIAA is going to come to the door?
Moreover, satellite radio is $10 - $13 a month, and I don't control the playlist, I just listen to what they send. This plan gives a subscriber control over what they're listening to, and the option to purchase if they want to add something to their permanent library. So, compared to satellite radio, this seems like a pretty competitive option. Once the tracks are purchased, we can start talking about fair use, and whether or not it exists under the agreements of the various download services.
UPDATE: After the Super Bowl ad, I shouldn't be surprised, but over 1000 people have signed up for the Napster to Go service, meaning that there is no more free mp3 player. Maybe I should have signed up this morning when I saw the service.
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3 comments:
As soon as the add came on everyone at our party said that same thing. Who wants to pay to rent music? You want to own it and be able to burn CDs. Further it doesn't work with the various iPods. I just don't see this making much of an impact on iTMS.
Posted by Clark Goble
I replied to you in my blog because it turned into a longish post???
Posted by yasmín
Basically, yeah. It looked a little long for the comments field, and so I just put it up as a post.
Posted by Zach
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