New version of service will allow burning for a fee:
- The company will charge consumers 99 cents per song, which means a full album of songs will cost only a few dollars less than the retail price. However, the deals are a sign that the major music labels are increasingly loosening their licensing policies for digital music.
Several other companies, including major label-backed Pressplay and independent Full Audio, also have won limited rights to let consumers burn CDs from music acquired through paid subscription services. While none of the offers exactly match consumers' desires for complete, unrestricted rights to music, it's a critical step forward, analysts say.
"CD burning is very important," said P.J. McNealy, research director with GartnerG2, a division of Gartner. "This is portability, and that's what consumers want."
Listen's Rhapsody service, along with Pressplay, MusicNet and Full Audio, all are scrambling to build businesses based around access to a huge range of music for a relatively low monthly fee. Music labels' reluctance to give up digital rights has hampered all of the services' growth, however.
Since their inception, the companies have labored under a comparison with file-swapping networks such as Kazaa or Grokster. Songs downloaded through those free services can be easily transferred to MP3 players or burned onto CDs. The subscription services have smaller catalogs, have limited ability to move songs to other devices, and most of all, cost between $10 and $15 per month. They are unambiguously legal, however--while many other file-swapping services struggle with copyright issues.
The price of 99 cents persong is still ridiculous - how about 9 cents per song - but at least they have entered the stream.
Article comments
1 - Jim S
c'mon Eric, 9 cents per song?? then Hillary Rosen wouldn't get that new Beemer she needs.
seriously... anything between 10 and 30 cents would be reasonable, fair and most of all PROFITABLE.
2 - Danielle
Most Companies out there letyou Download for free. It sthe Burning that they get you on. So My thing is this. There are some sites that charge under 10.00 to access there list of songs and download for free while other slike yahoo dont charge a thing to listen and download. So Why dont these charge sites, say you can pay like 10.00 a month and download like X amount of songs for that 10.00 a month! I guess either way we could just go buy the cd but how many of you actually like every song on a CD? Thsi option would let you chhose like 20 songs you WANT on one CD Vs 1 song you like and 19 you dont! Its called Customization!