What if the labels designed Napster? Ewwwww.

Cory Doctorow 11:15 am Tue Mar 26, 2002

Shift's done a roundup of the music industry's grotty little replacements for Ur-music services like (the original) Napster.

* You will be billed if you do not proactively cancel your fourteen-day "free" trial at the end of those fourteen days.

* You can’t burn more than two tracks per artist per month. Because you have to be online to burn pressplay downloads and you have use the integrated burning software (the tracks are encrypted), pressplay can monitor what you burn. Want to make a mixed Radiohead CD? Too bad. You can’t. You can mix two Radiohead tracks with other artists’ tracks though.

* If you unsubscribe, all of the tracks you’ve downloaded to date deactivate themselves and become unplayable. So, if you’ve been a subscriber of the Premium Plan for a year, you lose $400 of music. (Your tracks can be reactivated if you re-subscribe within six months). I can’t imagine how frustrating this would be for a dial-up user.

Link

Discuss

(Thanks, Mark!)

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