Napster Testing Music Rental Service

Posted by Oscar M. Cantu Categories: Music

We all rent movies instead of buying them. Sure, sometimes we just love a movie so much that we buy it. For the most part though, you just rent movies since you know you will only watch it a couple of times and that’s it. The same thing can be said for music. You buy songs or download them if they are free, listen to them a few times and never listen to them again. So why don’t we just rent music instead of buying the tracks? Napster answers the call. Napster is currently beta testing a music rental service where a user may subscribe for $15 a month and have access to unlimited downloads. The tracks a user downloads can be used on players that support Microsoft Windows Digital Rights Management technology, Janus. Sorry iPod users, for now the service only supports players made by Samsung, Rio and Creative. The Napster service also requires the user to update their license on a monthly basis. If the user does not have a valid subscription anymore, the song cannot be played. This is a nice concept, however if the iPod does not get an update to support this technology, this service will not get the full amount of users that it’s capable of reaching. After all, who wants to pay 99 cents a song when they can get unlimited songs a month for only $15? Of course if you go the free route, you will always be looking out for the R.I.A.A.

Read More | BBC News