February 25, 2001

10:11 PM

"That's one slurpee and five mp3s. . . "Music Tellers will happen one way or another, I'll bet. And there will be places--legal or not--where fast downloading of whatever will be available for a price. (It's been a long time--7-11s still have surpees don't they?)
posted by aflakete (2 comments total)

Paid-for digital audio sucks. I've tried out audible.com's "books on mp3" service, and after going through all the security and proprietary software checks, it left a lot to be desired. A full review is forthcoming, but unless they can price music to the point where it's easier to just buy it than track it down and download it, and if they trust users not to share them instead of creating new formats, it could work. But I doubt any company would give customers that much credit.
posted by mathowie at 10:35 PM on February 25, 2001

This kind of thing would be for people who don't want to bother downloading music on a PC or have slow connections. I think eventually the idea of copyright will stop being a problem, one way or another--most likely, they'll just stop trying to prevent files being traded. Some kind of statistical analysis will estimate how many songs by a particular artist have been downloaded, and they'll be paid some amount. CDs or whatever will be for collectors, or will be augmented with more than music, and be cheaper.

Certainly nothing as arcane and silly as audible's system will fly. While things look grim for napster et al, the genie is out of the bottle. And I think some people will pay for quick and reliable downloads.
posted by aflakete at 1:10 AM on February 26, 2001