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April 28, 2003

Online Music Solution?

Apple has come up with a model for online music distribution that even has the five major labels on-board.

The service announced Monday removes several limitations that have so far reduced legitimate online music distribution to a small niche in the entertainment industry.

For example, consumers can buy songs and keep them for as long as they want, share playlists on up to three Macintosh computers, and transfer them to any number of portable iPods so they can hear their music on the road. No subscriptions are necessary, and buyers can burn unlimited copies of the songs onto CDs.

"It's not free, but it's 99 cents a song, pretty doggone close," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said. "There's no legal alternative that's worth beans."

At first glance, it sounds like a pretty good plan to me - I'd be happy to pay 99 cents a song, with one caveat: they should make low quality MP3s available for auditioning of music before purchase. If I download a song and it sucks, I'm still out nearly a buck (and that can feed 400 children for a week in socialist fantasyland) - so some kind of pre-purchase listening is a must.

You know, if you're reading this, Mr. Jobs.