College students shunning free music subscription services

It's the rare college student who will turn down free anything -- free food, free booze, and free love are all top priorities for the modern scholar -- so we were more than a little surprised to learn that those online music subscriptions being offered gratis by a number of colleges haven't really taken off like one would assume. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, the services from Napster and company have proven so unpopular that many schools are dropping the program altogether after only a year or two, although the RIAA claims that the number of participating campuses will actually increase "pretty significantly" this fall. Even if that's true, it's not clear why students at newly-subscribed schools would behave any differently than ones who already have access to the free tunes and still choose alternative distribution methods -- most notably the iTunes music store and the still-popular P2P networks. Ultimately it seems to be the services' many restrictions that are turning off the college crowd -- tracks can't always be burned to disc or transferred to a DAP, and they also disappear after four years -- and the fact that students today treasure their iPods even more than their precious cans of beer only makes non-FairPlay content that much more undesirable.

[Via TechDirt]

[Darren @ Jul 7th 2006 11:20AM]

I've always said it and always believed it true:

If DRM isn't, for all intenvsive purposes, invisible to the consumer, they won't buy into it.

Nobody enjoys dealing with hassle, and the rampant DRM restrictions without any real standards in place just turns people off.

[ron g @ Jul 7th 2006 11:29AM]

Why did you choose to use white headphones and... ahem... an iPod T-shirt on a college student in this photo?

This is inferring that college students are shunning the iTMS service and the iPod.

I'm confused because the article you link to makes no mention of either.

[jfox @ Jul 7th 2006 11:36AM]

ron -

Think before you type. Why would he should the ipod shirt and ipod headphones? Only because its the most ubiquitous, well recognized music player on the market. And the article is talking about playing music. And in no way does this infer that students are shunning Itunes or the ipod. Quite the opposite, actually.

[dave95 @ Jul 7th 2006 11:40AM]

Goes to show, even if something is free does not mean it will be popular. It must me easy to use like iTunes+iPod. It must be seamless to the students, meaning if they buy a (none iPod) player, it must work as advertised without any problems with (PrayForShure). Would probably helped if they did work with the #1 player out for 5 years now (iPod). Also if these Subscription service are not being used when it's given for free, what does that say about their market.

The cool thing around campus is to listen to other iTuners music over the network; can these free subscription services do that?

That Picture is CLASSIC!! I love my iPod but Apple should send him a check!

[AJ @ Jul 7th 2006 11:42AM]

uh... "ron G" u clearly know nothing about pop culture cause the guy pictured did not really have an ipod or ipod shirt on, it was photoshopped on him. the guy in the pic is a legend, none other than "John Belushi" who died a while back. he was in many classic films like "animal house" and "blues brothers". he was a total comedic genius. sorry about the history lesson guys, but "ron" must clearly be 13 yrs old.

i think eventually people will get used to DRM since its only becoming more common, i personally wish it would burn in hell, but it is being implemented for obvious reasons. even though most people could just use sumthing like limewire and get a song perfectly free without DRM,and i would much rather take the latter.

[Splitime @ Jul 7th 2006 11:43AM]

It's also one of the more recognizable pictures of "college" and Hollywood. It's John Belushi and a snap from Animal House of him in his "College" shirt and holding a fifth of Jack Daniels... one of the more common posters found in dorm rooms for years.

It’s a play/pun and recognizable (belushi and ipod)... just let it go and stop thinking its some Ipod conspiracy.

[Ironman @ Jul 7th 2006 11:44AM]

jfox and ron
You guys are idiots and have no idea who is the guy in the picture, don't you?

[puh_fifer @ Jul 7th 2006 12:00PM]

At Penn State it was only free streaming on Napster. Even after one of my professors showed that you could use sound recorder to copy the music I still had no interest.

I'd rather just either buy/borrow a cd and rip it or go on limewire for what I want.

[JinKazama @ Jul 7th 2006 12:11PM]

Asking why this is failing is like asking why wouldn't someone buy a Porsche that could only go 65. Who wouldn't want to pay a small fee in the form of itunes or the CD itself to do what they want with their music? Granted itunes is restrictive also but your music is not going to disappear in 4 years or when your subscription runs out.

This story is a microcosm of what plagues all subscription services...you never really "own" your music. Which for a 3-6 minute audio snippet of someone's take on love and/or life through song is unfathomable to most people.

[Ryan Spray @ Jul 7th 2006 12:19PM]

At Purdue University, we had CDigix for about 2 years. Same deal, couldn't use DAP's or even another computer to access them. To me, it was essentially an album preview. I've always bought my music from AllofMp3, so I can get full-length previews with them anyway. I would have never gotten used to DRM.

[Elliot @ Jul 7th 2006 12:31PM]

Dave95 nailed it, on my campus you could log into a library computer, open up iTunes, and have as much shared music as you wanted over Rendevous, not to mention your own if you lived on campus. Add a little BC or OT and you're set.

[The Dude @ Jul 7th 2006 12:42PM]

***Ok, back on topic, eh? I go to Washington University in St. Louis, and they just started up the song download service this summer. What they don't tell you is that the company does not have the songs you want. What do I mean by that? You pick recently famous musicians, and if you're lucky you can download the whole album BUT the hit songs that got them there. The company didn't buy the rights to the songs people actually care about. Artists like the Beatles, Parliament (70's funk), Billy Joel, Boston, etc. maybe have like 1 song that you can listen to/download out of each album. That is why nobody takes interest. As well, (I use Ruckus), the interface for finding songs is down right aweful. It looks terrible, it's impossible to browse, basically it lacks everything that makes the iTunes music store, and the new Urge music store so great. Oh, and the DRM really isn't a problem if you have any knowledge of google, and a friend (or yourself) that can get you a hack to one of the multiple DRM removing programs. People are being a bit noobish if they find the DRM hindering. Peace out yo'.

-The Dude

[Matt @ Jul 7th 2006 12:53PM]

If college kids are really annoyed that Billy Joel and Boston are not available to them then we have much bigger issues facing us then free subscription services not catching on.

I appologize if you are middle aged and returning to college to get your degree.

[Lisa @ Jul 7th 2006 1:08PM]

At Cornell we got unlimited Napster for the past two school years. The problem, as stated, was that the free Napster downloads did not work on ipods. The software also does not work on Macs whatsoever, so there was anger from the Mac user camp as well. Our student government decided not to renew our subscriptions for next year :(

I personally loved the free Napster. It was annoying that it didn't work on my ipod, but all I had to do was record a track using Audacity (free software) and re-encode as an mp3. It took a little extra time, but I got free high qual tracks for my ipod.

[Andrew @ Jul 7th 2006 1:22PM]

I can't believe someone had to explain who Bluto Blutarski was. I feel very old, and my weekend is ruined.

[Jeremy @ Jul 7th 2006 1:32PM]

Why would college students care about Napster when they have sneakernets? That's when you just hand a removable hard drive around and share your music, compiling a heavy selection. Even in 91' in college you could get thousands of BBS sites to download games for free - I don't expect much to change in 15 years.

[daschupa @ Jul 7th 2006 1:46PM]

Why are they offering free music? I mean seriously, why? To hedge piracy? Shoot, give me free music for four years and I'll never steal music (not that I do now). Do these dorks actually believe they'll be listening to their copies of Oar or Slipknot: Acoustic Christmas four years from now? Does RIAA actually think people will sway from stealing, when a closed fist is their greatest advantage? This isn’t a story about the unpopularity of DRM, rather the unethical nature of pampered thieves. I'm not pro-RIAA, just anti-Piracy.

[Todd @ Jul 7th 2006 1:58PM]

I go to University of Missouri in Rolla, and about a year ago, Cdigix was 15 bucks a semester. I don't know a single person who signed up. Then, last semester, they decided to start offering it for free. I sitll don't know anyone who uses it. The school consists of mostly tech geeks, so we have better methods of obtaining DRM-free MP3s.

[Mike @ Jul 7th 2006 2:04PM]

I get all my music free (illegally I suppose). I have no intention of ever paying for music that has DRM or anything like that. Plus Itunes doesent interest me. I just like to drag and drop songs in windows explorer onto my mp3 player.

I would also feel stupid paying for music. Because Downloading music and piracy is not an enforced law (only enforced to distributers, not downloaders (well at least not here in Canada anyway).

I think of the situation like this... Suppose you where walking on the street and saw 2 hot dog vendors next to each other. 1 Has a permit for that corner and the other does not. The one who has the permit sells a dog for $2 and the one who does not have the permit is giving away dogs for free (both are quality dogs by the way and have helth inspection liscences. On top of that, The legal vendor is restricting you to 2 toppings while the illegal vendor lets you get as many as you want. Now wouldent you feel stupid for paying for a limited topping hotdog when the guy right beside him is giving away free unlimited topping hot dogs?

[halo101 @ Jul 7th 2006 2:20PM]

mmmmm hot dogs with toppings yummy.

[daschupa @ Jul 7th 2006 4:05PM]

But wouldnt they be stolen hot dogs?

[Jeffrey M Foster @ Jul 7th 2006 4:56PM]

Gee, Napster et all can't even give their service away for free!

imagine that.

[DJ Double E @ Jul 7th 2006 6:50PM]

It's the hardware. Subscription based services aren't supported by iPods, and 80% of the kids have iPods. So..... Doesn't take a genius to figure out why this is happening. I continue to assert that if Apple were to introduce subscription iTunes and iPods (firmware upgrades required), this would catch on. True, many don't like any DRM tracks in the slightest. But the majority of iPod users like whatever Apple offers. If Apple offers it, it must be cool/hip/the new thing. It takes better marketing too. The very fact that Apple backs it will make it more of an attractive music model. For example, it takes $15K to fill up the largest capacity iPod with iTunes tracks. It takes your whole life of paying $15 dollars a month to access millions of tracks to approach that amount. Synching once a month is no biggy (everyone is connected these days). Now, clever marketeers, convey that to the masses properly and this has a much better chance of taking off.

[Jo @ Jul 9th 2006 10:38PM]

I stopped using our school's 'free' music download service for three reasons: Firse, the restrictions on the files were so overwhelming that even downloading them required a great deal of hassle. Second, the service itself required a lot of strange and irritating downloads. I couldn't use Firefox or Opera, I had to download and install their content management plugin (which does nothing other than eat up system resources) and I had to install their browsing utility. Finally, I stopped using the service because it didn't have a single artist I liked. Not a single one. Their limited content, difficulty of access, and infuriating system is too much trouble for its worth. A nice attempt, but it just didn't work.

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Jul 10th 2006 4:07AM]

It's not about hardware, it's not about software. It's all about integration. Nobody buys iPod for sake of iPod. Success of iPod is directly linked to success of iTunes as music management software and (hopefully) iTMS as music shop.

I have never had an iPod. I had before player from Philips GoGear and now SanDisk Sansa. Hardware mostly Ok. But software interface is just awful. Integration with Windows Media Player doesn't offer much - since WMPlayer is such pain in the ass to use. Just yesterday found that WMP has bugs in its ID3 and/or MTP implementations and does set bogus track numbers: it's hard to listen to album when tracks are in random order. Syncing limited to single playlist and incorrect setting can easily wipe out the few gigs of music you already uploaded to player. PITA.

From all options tried, most non-iPod players are still best used as Mass Storage devices with music copied there manually. Compare that to iTunes and it's management and syncing capabilities: heaven to earth.

P.S. Also, to my audiophile ears, AAC of Apple sounds magnitude better compared to WMA of M$. Most of the music I heard downloaded from Yahoo (and encoded manually) compared to music my friends have obtained from iTMS (or I have encoded manually) - the quality of AAC beats WMA hands down. iPod is not about great features: it's all about stable *average* good quality.

[Jo @ Jul 10th 2006 3:00PM]

`Philips` Filipau has another good point. Most of the material offered by the services is fairly low in quality. While I don't like AAC any more than the next person, it's better than WMA by far. It would be nice to see more music services that distribute FLAC or APE formatted songs.

[Jaxon @ Jul 11th 2006 10:56AM]

Does it work with my Ipod?......NO....not interested.

Next question....

[student organizations manager @ Aug 26th 2006 9:57PM]

That guy kinda looks like Joel Spolsky.