Music hardware...why is this good?

[acebake]

I just read an article about a new music player idea. To summarize, they are planning to have a subscription service, with software from Microsoft that makes the song no longer available if the subscription is cancelled.

I'm confused...why would people want this, when Apple offer .99 music downloads?

 

[DaveSimmons]

The subscription will be a lot lower cost than buying the songs.

Right now both Napster and Rhapsody offer this kind of server for PCs, for $10/month. You can listen to an unlimited number of tracks on your PC for the flat $10, you just can't burn CDs or copy the tracks to a player (without buying them like from iTunes). If you want to listen to more than 10 new songs a month it's a good deal.

I use Napster to listen to full CDs before deciding whether to buy. If I like them enough I buy the CD and rip to lossless FLAC for my music server, and MP3 for my Zen Xtra portable.