Friday, October 10, 2003
It's time to get ... Legal
The Napster pre-release party has happened and the details of the supposed future of music downloading has form. As of October 29th, Napster 2.0 will offer the ability to download songs for 99c (US) or $9.95 for unlimited monthly downloads. However, the US-centric presumption prevails and non-US users are barred from the service for now. For that matter, so is anyone using a Mac or non-XP/2000 Windows. Try and log in from a non-XP/2000 computer and you get the following:
Australian IT reports that Warner Music and Telstra BigPond are teaming up to develop an Australian legal downloading hub for music before Christmas. The report:
The Napster pre-release party has happened and the details of the supposed future of music downloading has form. As of October 29th, Napster 2.0 will offer the ability to download songs for 99c (US) or $9.95 for unlimited monthly downloads. However, the US-centric presumption prevails and non-US users are barred from the service for now. For that matter, so is anyone using a Mac or non-XP/2000 Windows. Try and log in from a non-XP/2000 computer and you get the following: We're sorry, Napster is not currently compatible with your operating system. Napster is currently compatible with Windows XP/2000. Windows 95, Windows NT and the Mac OS are not supported at this time. If you are planning on using Napster on this computer, the service will not be compatible and you should discontinue registration. If you will use Napster on a different computer, with a compatible operating system, please continue.So, for all intents and purposes, Australian users are no better off. Grrr. However ...
Australian IT reports that Warner Music and Telstra BigPond are teaming up to develop an Australian legal downloading hub for music before Christmas. The report:
Telstra says BigPond Music will become Australia's largest music download site. Single tracks and albums will be available for download in early December, and will not count towards broadband download caps. Telstra "had been approached by other labels and expects other labels to make further contact with BigPond to discuss options for potential deals," Telstra BigPond spokeswoman Kerrina Lawrence said. Special deals will be available for BigPond customers, she said. Tracks would be available "extremely economically," with the cost added to users' internet service bill, BigPond managing director Justin Milne said. "BigPond users will be rewarded with significant discounts," Mr Milne said. "At a time when the new digital models continue to emerge we believe this partnership solves many of the digital issues we face," Warner Music Australasia chief executive Shaun James said.At a price expected to be around $2 a track, this could be Australia's Napster 2.0. Of course, Microsoft's copyright-protected WMA format will be under the hood, but that's what Microsoft developed it for, I guess!
[Posted by Unknown] [3:03 pm]
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