Buy or subscribe digital music ?

[SingSing]

Ipod sells songs at $1 a song. Napster and Yahoo let you have all the songs as long you maintain the subscription.

If you own the song, and loss it, you have to buy again.

If you subscribe, you supposely have no access to the songs once you stop.

Which work better ?

Are these going to be the only models for digital movies over the web too ?

[ROF]

Depends on your preference I guess. It would be nice to be able to access your music anywhere. The subscription services offer this. iTunes has you download a copy of the track. If you want to listen to it somewhere else you have to move it there. I have found that iTunes combined with satelite radio provides me with the best options for music.

There really is only three options when it comes to intangible media provided via the internet:

Subscription Service
Download Service
or Streaming Service

[rsgars]

There is a type of service in it's infancy that has the potential to destroy both of those business models. That's what they are, after all, business models, not really services. Anyway, it is called "weedsharing." It is very much in it's infancy but the basic premise is this: If you are interested in a song (or eventually a video, podcast or whatever) you download it and you may listen to it in its entirety three times for free. After the third listen you must pay for the file to listen to it.

Now, here is the very best part, IMHO, the artist gets 50% of every sale! The person you buy the weedfile from gets anywhere from 5%-20%. Basically it is network marketing for online music sales. Suppose you buy a weedfile and think I would like it. You email the song to me and I can listen to it three times for free. If I buy it, you get a percentage! How cool is that?

I think it's great and look forward to it growing and putting iTunes, subscription services, and the record companies out of business.

If you are interested in learning more go to www.weedshare.com

[SingSing]

Technically, it is easy for anyone to subscribe for a short period of time, get the songs to his/her PC, and re-record them through audio out/audio in of that PC, thus rip off the provider.