Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:

The iPod and iTunes haven't ostensibly suffered for (and have arguably gained from the) lack of a subscription music service. However, while such services have proven a tough sell to consumers at large, they have their benefits. One is the general liberation from the 30-second sample, a tiny prison of time that makes it difficult to engage in meaningful music discovery, the silver lining in the digital cloud that has been raining on the music industry for so many years.

In contrast to Rhapsody, Napster and Microsoft's Zune Pass, which offer several ways within their software for subscribers to hear full tracks in which they might be interested, Apple has recently turned "out of band" for music discovery. The high-profile announcement with Starbucks at the introduction of Apple's latest round of iPods brings the portable devices to where the free music is rather than vice versa. Among Apple's portable music players, the automatic track identification works only with the iPod touch and the iPhone. However, the flat-panel televisions in New York City Starbucks locations also note PCs and Macs as suitable (and prevalent) clients for purchasing music played at the popular coffee retailer.

An encouraging aspect of the collaboration between Starbucks and Apple is that the right company is making the brown product. However, one hot spot of trouble brewing in this Half-n-Half is that one can listen to the music only at a Starbucks location. This begs whether Apple would continue such a partnership when the iPhone finally gets access to 3G (perhaps to the scandalous exclusion of AT&T) or whether it or another device such as the iPod touch embrace WiMAX. But extending access to Starbucks' percolated playlists need not wait for such wireless advances. The two companies could enable access via a simple option in iTunes that would stream Starbucks' Hear Music XM station -- or an equivalent -- via any broadband connection.

After making big plays in North America and Western Europe, former P2P piracy powerhouse and current legitimate download service Napster has finally set up shop in Asia, bringing its war with iTunes to the world's second-largest music market: Japan. Although the Japanese store is actually owned more by Tower Records Japan than Napster itself (53.5% versus 31.5%, but considering that Tower.com/Digital hasn't exactly made a huge splash, the branding choice seems to be right on), the services offered are distinctly Napster, with the tried-and-true basic, Napster To Go, and a la carte models having been ported over for this implementation. The initial cache of 1.9 million tracks will come from a mix of Japanese and foreign artists, with domestic tunes costing 200 yen ($1.70) and Western songs going for 150 yen ($1.27) -- the same price that Apple charges for its wares. Besides the all-you-can-eat PlaysForSure subscription option not available from iTunes, the real draw here will supposedly come from Napster's partnership with NTT DoCoMo, which will eventually result in direct-to-mobile downloads (hear that, Apple / Softbank?). Overall the move seems like a good one for Napster -- which may or may not be seeking suitors to help buoy its stock price -- and for fans of Japanese music as well, because now we know that our Kahimi Karie and Pizzicato Five albums deserve to fetch much more on eBay than the usual crap we try to unload.

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]