|
Subscription Music's Curious Silence |
|
|
|
|
Thursday, 17 February 2005 |
Subscription Music's Curious Silence
Technology Review
For Napster, these may be the best of times
and the worst of times. The company finally unveiled Napster To Go, which allows
subscribers to its streaming music service to put music on select portable
digital music players. But not long after the service was introduced, Napster
fell victim to a workaround that may threaten the company's new subscription
business model.
Napster now offers two music plans: Users can pay.99 cents to download a song,
or for $9.95 per month, they can get streaming access to over 1,000,000 songs.
The workaround requires the Winamp player, changing its user setting, signing up
for Napster's free 14-day trial period, and then recording the Napster-provided
music streams playing through your PC. It's an updated -- and higher quality --
version of putting a tape recorder up to your speakers and recording songs off
the FM dial.
News of the hack appeared first on various message boards, and was quickly
picked up by the Los Angeles Times, which had the dishy dirt of Apple Computer
chief executive officer Steve Jobs emailing the news around to record labels,
writing "I thought you should know if you haven't heard about this."
When informed of the Jobs' note, Napster'a chief executive officer Chris Gorog
allegedly dashed off a response to the record label heads, reassuring them that
Napster itself hadn't been hacked, while pointing out Apple's fallibility in the
digital rights management game as well.
Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register. Powered by AkoComment 2.0! |
