Thursday, February 03, 2005

Apple Computer proved people will pay 99 cents on the Internet to buy songs one-by-one and own them. Now, a rival company is about to find out how many are willing to pay a flat fee to rent music -- if they can take it with them.

Napster Inc. today officially introduced Napster To Go, a service that is the musical equivalent of a smorgasbord, charging subscribers about $15 a month for access to all the music they care to listen to. Subscription music services like these have been around the Net for years ... [but] Napster To Go adds that critical element: portability. Previous subscription services (including Napster's) restricted users to listening only on their PCs for a simple reason: lack of software that could prevent subscribers from storing permanent copies of their rented songs on portable players, then canceling their subscriptions. Last year, Microsoft Corp. introduced a new version of its copy-protection software that allows subscription services to transfer music to mobile devices, while at the same time preventing subscribers from making permanent copies.

Other companies are planning to follow with similar services, including RealNetworks, Virgin, FYE.com, [and] MusicNet ... If successful, the new options for buying and renting music online could challenge Apple's approach to selling music, which has garnered it upward of 70% of the music-download market.