MP3's Wish
from the let?s-all-jump-onto-a-subscription-based-model dept
MP3.com has decided to re-launch their my.mp3.com service, with the brilliant idea of charging user for a subscription service. Not a bad idea if they provide a Napster like service, but a terrible one if they offer the same service they had a few months ago.
Comments on “MP3's Wish”
No Subject Given
The original my.mp3.com service was great. It allowed you to get mp3 versions of all the songs you already had in your CD collection, anywhere in the world, without having to go through the time consuming process of extracting and converting from a CD.
Furthermore their mp3s were high quality, complete & static-free which is not always the case with Napster mp3s.
It was like having your whole CD collection accessable from anywhere; you didn’t have to hunt like you did with napster.
What I’m not so sure about is a subscription fee. Why would I pay a monthly fee to listen to music I’ve already bought? Wouldn’t I just be better off buying a nice firewire hard-disk and carrying my music with me?
Re: No Subject Given
Complete and static-free? Yes, agreed. High quality? Arguable, since if I recall correctly all of their MP3s were 128kbps, which is just a bit below the threshold of what I’d call hi-fi.
The service still might find some subscribers who appreciate the convenience, but customer expectations are completely different for a free vs a pay service. A lot of the CD’s in my collection weren’t in their database, and others would take forever to be “beamed.” If I were a paying customer, I’d probably not have been too happy.
Re: Re: No Subject Given
This could be a lastminute attempt by MP3.com to show that all important “path to profitability”. Which of course means showing some growth in revenues to try and pull in some more cash from investors. I think on this front the only music subscription site I’d be even close confident in succeeding would be if Napster became one.