> And while protected content is fundamentally uninteresting for purchases, > it's entirely > understandable for subscription services. (Making a subscription service > without DRM is > totally unworkable, as everyone would subscribe for a month, download > everything, and > then quit.)
Interestingly, it has worked out very well for the adult content industry. ;) [Note that all that follows has nothing to do with DRM] As it stands, I'm not interested in a subscription service for a simple reason - I do not like lock ins at all. It might be that I like a few artists that only Yahoo has, or some that only Real has, or some Napster-only. Others may, heaven forbid, not partake in any of these services. That means that either I might have to pay for, say two different services and use two different pieces of software, or everyone offers the same content in a different package anyway. On the other hand, if everyone has this convenient access to the same large catalog of music, that's the end for anyone who's not included in this catalog. Independent labels lose even more visbility and sales. Additionally, people will feel like "I'm already paying flat-rate, I'll make do without music I'd have to pay extra for." I'd hoped for widespread broadband to effect a de-centralisation in music distribution - the opposite seems to be the case. In any case the internet is still missing an open standard for the distribution of paid content - I'd like to be able to go to the Desperate Housewives web site, click on Episode Archive and just download any or all episodes for $1 each. Then I'd like to go the official Frank Sinatra web site and dowload a couple of albums for $10 each. And then I'd like to visit some obscure Russian researcher's web site for a paper on European fairy tales' influence on Japanese literature. $5. And because visiting so many web sites is tedious, let them put their for-sale content in special RSS-like feed, so it can be crawled, indexed and semi-automatically purchased by whatever free or paid indexing provider one might like to use. If someone can do without bells and whistles, just use Google (+ squeezebox plugin), if you'd like something fancy, use iTunes as your frontend, complete with editorial content. Yes, that is exactly like using .torrents, and torrent index sites - people seem to like the concept, why not make money on it? C. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
