Listen.com: Burning for You
The record labels may be getting serious about offering alternatives to piracy online: Listen.com will roll out an upgrade to its Internet music service tomorrow that will allow subscribers to burn more than 75,000 songs to blank CDs for 99 cents apiece.
The songs will be provided in Windows Media Audio format, but Listen.com's software will convert them into regular CD tracks before burning them to disc. The resulting audio CDs can be played on any CD hardware -- or copied with any computer.
Tracks available for burning include the entire catalogue from such name-brand artists as Eminem and titles from thousands of other artists under contract to Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, the two labels that granted CD-burning licenses to Listen.com last week.
All five top recording companies had previously licensed music to this San Francisco firm for streaming. The 99-cent song purchases will be available to customers of Listen.com's $9.95-a-month Rhapsody service, which lets users play titles from a 250,000-song library.
This revamped Rhapsody also will let subscribers access their personal play lists and listening libraries from any Internet-connected computer, not just the one they used to create their account.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20217-2002Oct26.htmlWhy bother? Just use a file sharing program and download your music from there. The money you pay sites like these are going to the same bunch of people who want to take all of our software and media rights away. By the way, you hear about record companies and the like complaining that file sharing and mp3's are going to make them go bankrupt and that they are losing millions of dollars. They did the same thing when the cassette recorder and VCR came out. Any time a device or software application comes around that lets you get
free media, be it music or movie, on the computer or TV, you hear people like the record companies bitch and moan that they are losing millions of dollars and that they will soon be bankrupt. It has not happened yet...
Thats enough bitching for one night.
[edit - title apended]
[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: Calum-21.2 ]
