University Sponsored Music Services? 276
Amy's Robot writes "The president of Penn State University is urging colleges to start their own digital music services. The schools would pay the licensing fees, and pass the charges on to their students. His logic is that paying for the school's service is an incentive not to use an "illegal" service. Supposedly, there will be some pilot programs this fall, but it seems like there are a lot of obstacles to overcome before then."
God, tuition is high enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone know what percentage of a university tuition actually goes towards eduction (professor salaries, equpment) these days?
Re:God, tuition is high enough (Score:2)
Re:God, tuition is high enough (Score:2)
Scams (Score:4, Interesting)
The Rochester Institute of Technology [rit.edu](which I currently attend), for example, lets practically anyone with the motor skills to fill out an application in. They charge them their $26 000 or so for their first year, and then they fail half of them. You see, RIT happens to have an attrition rate over 50%.
Now, that $26 000 certainly isn't spent on the freshman taking English 101 and "Intro to VB." It's spent on the upperclassmen. The failures end up subsidizing the upperclassmen, and everything's great.
I'm just ranting. Ignore me.
Re:Scams (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The accept un-/under-qualified applicants, which they do because they feel this need to fill seat and grow into a larger school. Over the last 10 years they have almost doubled the size.
2) They expect students to realize how crappy they are doing and GET help. If they were to add more "Freshman advisors" and anyone who get's less then a 2.0 GPA in a semister is REQUIRED to talk to one of these people (who makes sure they get the help)
3) It's a hard school, i personal know 2 people who dropped out because they had nervous breakdowns!
Don't bitch about the uperclassman benifiting from the lower classman's tuition, that happens EVERYWHERE. If those 50% that leave freshman year cared about their 26 grand they would have done what they needed to to pass. As you pointed out, all freshman year is English Comp and Lit, Basic Sciences, a few fine arts, total fitness and the activiteis, and maybe 1 class in your major each quarter! If they can't pass that, they would prolly have flunked out almost anywere they went!
Re:Scams (Score:2)
There's just growing sentiment that RIT secretly -likes- the attrition rate where it is, since it brings large amounts of money into the college.
Re:Scams (Score:2)
Re:Scams (Score:3, Informative)
Well, I certainly couldn't pass that! Only one class in my major, instead of almost all but one? Are American universities that different from Canadian ones? I guess.
Lesse, first year undergraduate Computer Science in 1979-80 at Concordia in Montr
Re:Scams (Score:3, Informative)
"And, instead of being a tool for social mobility, higher education will become (for my children's generation) a barrier to social mobility."
Higher education was not, originally a tool for social mobility. Until the mid-1900s, it was only for the wealthy. It served as a forum for maintaining the social class system, throughout the western world. With the economic booms following both wars, people in the middle classes of the West found themselves able to afford h
Canada (Score:3, Interesting)
The only reason I stayed was for the full ride. (Remember kids. Take your PSAT. It may seem like it doesn't matter, but National Merit Scholar Finalists get $$$ ^_^ )
Re:$26,000 USD????? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$26,000 USD????? (Score:4, Funny)
Judging by the number of trolls on slashdot claiming to have graduated from american universities, it's not the education either.
Most likely the women!
Re:$26,000 USD????? (Score:3)
American universities provide the best education terrorists can get anywhere in the world.
Which is both true and false, of course. It really is amazing how many of the top-level terrorist leaders seem to be educated at Harvard, Yale, Oxford (okay, I admit, that's in England) or other Western schools of similar credentials.
But at the same time, most of the suicide bombers are from financially-depressed ar
Re:God, tuition is high enough (Score:2, Interesting)
Salaries remain the #1 expenditure item in most institutions' Education & General budget. At my institution, salaries account for 75-80% of the total education & general budget, with approximately half the budget going to instructors' salaries. Instructional supplies & equipment add another 10-15% to the total, so instruction alone accounts for about 60-65% of the budget
Which is higher priced... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Which is higher priced... (Score:2)
1. Radio stations have tiny royalty payments.
2. Internet jukebox-style radio stations (pick and play) would have huge royalty payments. (see Bill of Rights Ammendment 14, equal protection under the law)
3. So, what it they used wireless transport to make a college jukebox internet radio station? Hmm...
We pass the savings on to you! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We pass the savings on to you! (Score:2, Interesting)
So they upgraded to a 10mbit DS3 (and had that at least until now). nearly 20k students and a 10mbit Internet connection. That's just ridiculous.
So, instead of hogging the Internet bandwith with morons downloading
Re:We pass the savings on to you! (Score:2)
You're getting off light with $60/semester, there is a school in Florida with a fee of $2000/year.
Re:We pass the savings on to you! (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, what the heck are you doing? I know I'm showing my age, but we had 1200 baud dialups and had no trouble getting "work" done.
What gets done on campus networks these days that requires more speed than that? I guess if you were saving MS Word docs on a network share, that'd get old.
two words for you: (Score:2)
Isnt this what iTunes.com is? (Score:4, Interesting)
kc
Re:Isnt this what iTunes.com is? (Score:2)
Re:Isnt this what iTunes.com is? (Score:2)
I shudder to think what kind of music collection university administrators are going to generate -- and that's before the local Diversity Committee and the Womyn's Center get their fingers into t
Paying (Score:3, Insightful)
And btw, who officially stamped these as illegal? As long as Kazaa has its doors open..
Think of the selection! (Score:2, Interesting)
Business Model (Score:5, Funny)
1. Let's cheaply (free!) allow everyone to get a product that they love.
2. Let's completely block access to all sources of this product.
3. Let's sell the product.
4. (Ah, shucks... you know what comes here.)
Davak
Re:Business Model (Score:2)
It wouldn't be so bad if not for the mandatory dining-hall plans many colleges subject their freshmen to.
Re:Business Model (Score:2)
whats changed? (Score:2)
I wonder what students will go for...
Re:Why pay when you can get it free? (Score:2)
Re:Why pay when you can get it free? (Score:2)
So the point being that bandwidth limits, while stopping
Re:whats changed? (Score:2)
not sure.... (Score:5, Informative)
From the link: " In addition, pirates need a place to store their 'warez' and often surreptitiously hijack third party servers to use as storage sites. This problem is especially acute at universities. "
Re:not sure.... (Score:2)
what a surpise: "...students majoring in a science, like computer science and engineering, were more likely to pirate software than other students."
Re:not sure.... (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with this, based on my experience at Rutgers, is that the software is not always the newest version, and you must run a program in the background to verify licences. Also, when one goes home for the weekend/break/etc., the program will not start because the Keyserver will only verify you if you are physically in a dorm.
Why run crippled Photoshop
Obstacles? (Score:5, Insightful)
And besides, wasn't this tried before? *cough* mp3.com *cough*
Re:Obstacles? (Score:2)
Now, I'm sure this won't stop piracy. But it would cut down on bellyaching if the university crippled out-of-network bandwid
What's next? (Score:2, Insightful)
What about the students that don't use this service? Are they exempt from the charge?
Re:What's next? (Score:2)
This was one of the most frequent questions asked at orientation at my old school. Every year, without fail, people would ask why th
Nice side effect (Score:3, Insightful)
With the possibility of profit, universities may decide to crack down harder on the illegal music trading for their own purposes.
Legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
"I think it's a very good step to try to find new ways to provide music legally to college students"
Oh that right, college students never obtain music legally.
And just what we need. Yet another fee (YAF) tacked onto tuition. It's bad enough students have to pay for a lot of the crap they don't use anyway. My univiersity added "free" parking my last year. It was made up for in tuition fees. That way, everyone had to pay $50 for the best parking you never got.
Way to go parkig services. Go Penn State! Make all the students pay for music they won't know they're getting. Where's the freedom of speech in that?
it's called free radio. (Score:2)
At Penn State, it probably has something to do with the current administration.
Next stop, firebrands for the library's paper hold
Re:Legal? (Score:2)
You live on campus, you get access. It could be sold as a perk for living there. Speeds for downloading right off the fiber-connected campus server would be phenomenal. People living off-campus would just have to use KaZaa.
How about (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How about (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How about (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How about (Score:2)
They did this when I was in college almost 20 years ago. The land was actually park land adjacent to the college. A steep hill with southwestern exposure, lots of cover foliage, and poor visibility provided excelle
Re:How about (Score:2)
Pass the buck (Score:5, Insightful)
Need some money? Just go to the ones you have the most power over, and most likely already in overwhelming debt.
The president of Penn State is an idiot. Definitely NOT acting in the best interest of the students.
Re:Pass the buck (Score:2)
Re:Welcome to the real word....genius (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Welcome to the real word....genius (Score:2)
What a wonderful world YOU live in.
I pity your parents when they get old enough to be your responsibility.
Re:Welcome to the real word....genius (Score:3, Insightful)
I pay for Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security, because (theoretically) others will pay for me when I need it. Maybe I could blow all my Social Security money on the latest pop CD's (by then they will be singing from the cradle), but I'll be more likely to spend it on saltine crackers.
Another poster mentioned the invalidity of the high school argument.
I don't have many friends without cars. Guess it's because they have jobs, and are able to get out of the
What a joke. (Score:2)
A state funded school is going into the music business.
This is sooo wrong on so many levels.
Dolemite
___________________
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What a joke. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.psu.edu/trustees/robinson.html [psu.edu]
Paying for entertainment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Last time I heard, it is the students and/or their families who are paying for this via the tuition and related fees, not the other way around. Where is the outrage at universities funneling more and more money into sports teams, choosing childrens games over academics?
Re:Paying for entertainment? (Score:2)
Hell, our students get free cable tv, I can't even afford cable right now.
Wasted resources. (Score:5, Insightful)
He's exactly right. The idea of the school licensing music for the students is stupid. Either ban p2p on campus networks altogether or make students who want to use campus computing resources attend a brief IP seminar. Squeeze the plagiarism talk in with that and you're all set. If they abuse campus computing resources after having been educated about what they're doing, revoke their priviliges. We're all adults here and don't need any more of this childish handholding.
Re:Wasted resources. (Score:2)
'pay' and 'free' are two totally different things (Score:2, Interesting)
Not such a good business model (Score:5, Insightful)
Many colleges also won't have the resources (technical, human, financial, and temporal) to pull this off. It takes a lot of time and effort to negotiate the licenses - more than you'd think. So it'll suck for the students if their college has a poor selection but they have to pay anyway, since it's in tuition.
Also, the idea of charging extra to burn onto CD (read the article) is going to be a big turn off, especially when Apple lets you do it at no extra charge.
Really, the best idea would be for universities to partner with Apple and maybe offer discount rates for Apple Music Store. Like, maybe a student rate that instead of $0.99/song is $10 for 20 songs. Or perhaps offer a 5 day free trial of the Apple Music Store during Orientation week. Or something like that. Out of all the legal music services, Apple is (at the moment) by far the cheapest, and the most permissive when it comes to what you can do with the music (unlimited CD burning). Unless the colleges can offer something of comparable or better quality, no one is going to use it. Given Apple's history of being an educational "partner", I'd say maybe Penn State wants to work something out with Steve Jobs...
Re:Not such a good business model (Score:2)
Re:Not such a good business model (Score:2)
Re:Not such a good business model (Score:2)
These people are smart enough to understand the store concept, and know already whether or not they'd pay a dollar per song. Being able to get 30 or whatever for free wouldn't sway you either way; it would just give you 30 songs.
Free trials are useful for swaying customer
As long as it's not a flat rate (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought that university-supplied music was called "radio."
Re: (Score:2)
Ha! (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, so Apple have shown that on-line digital music sales can be successful. (Short-term anyway)
Academia is trying to protect their students while still throwing cash at the RIAA.
Is it any wonder they are unwilling to start any service of their own? I mean, they are soaking up cash for fun now, with people wanting to throw *more* at them?
1. Create cash cow.
2. Milk cash cow.
4. Profit!
What is happening here is: 3. Mangage to get other people to milk cow for you. FOR FREE!
This idea is stupid (Score:2, Interesting)
The RIAA will only be happy when we are charged for being alive, because obviously, 100% of the people who pirate music are alive.
As a student of Penn State ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Is that enough sarcasm for you? Is music piracy an issue on campus? Absolutely. Will group licensing music solve that problem? Not a chance. Why? One reason is the university has very diverse tastes and it would never be able to appeal to them all.
For example, the university has a concert every year called Moving On. There is almost always flack surrounding it as the university can't appeal to everyone's tastes. I don't think licensed university music will do any better when people who have grown up with Kazaa and Napster are used to clicking away to whatever they want.
Personally I think the university should continue to do what it is doing and continue measures to curb piracy as it wishes. But licensing music will not curb the piracy problem.
That's my $.02.
Re:As a student of Penn State ... (Score:2)
Actually... (Score:4, Interesting)
If the college worked it right, and the students didn't have to pay a huge amount of money, I think most students that were living in the dorms would like this. And if the college is worried about students eating up all the bandwidth on the campus, just make the mp3 servers only available to the dorms, not the rest of the network, that is simple to do. As for administrating the server and all, students could that with faculity oversight to keep the cost down.
I would have rather paid the college that I went to for a service like this rather than paying $125 to Student Government every semester. At least I would have gotten my money's worth of music.
Non RIAA music? J-pop? Eurobeat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I find it highly unlikely that these networks would ever be able to get licenses to most foreign artists' works. Thus, I would continue to use WinMX [winmx.com] to get my music. The RIAA can't touch me (I'm not infringing on -their- copyrights), the University can't touch me (RIT won't act unless on a specific complaint from a copyright holder), and the foreign labels can't/won't touch me (lotsa reasons for that one).
I don't want to generalize, but college studends tend (TEND!) to have more ecclectic tastes than the foaming masses. I highly doubt that they use p2p primarily to get their "Top 40" fix every night.
marching bands / orchestras (Score:2, Interesting)
If some colleges are able to strike a deal with the music organizations, then it would probably be in the music industry's best interests to make identical programs available to colleges throughout the US.
Even if a school cannot strike a deal with the larger organizations, or simply chooses not to do so, they should still organize a way to make any school-specific media available. Recordings of the marching band, or if a college has its own orchestras, jazz ensembles, theatre performances, etc... Any med
A lot of obstacles (Score:2)
Such as P2P services X, Y, and Z that don't force our students to pay the piper.
Sorry, folks, but I caved in to my inner troll.
Pot Calling The Kettle Black (Score:3, Troll)
For some reason when I read this I assumed that most people would be glad a university is thinking of ways to help their students "needs" and reduce their overhead as well. Wow was I wrong. While there are a few people that like the idea, it seems as if most are finding one reason or another to complain. If a university is willing to license music from a record company and offer it to the students at a small rate, I think it's a great idea. Sure, they're not going to have every artist or album known to man licensed, but at least it's a starting point to fixing an out of control problem. Maybe people would have a better perspective if they were the one's being singled out by the RIAA and being forced to pay a fine PER SONG.
Re:Pot Calling The Kettle Black (Score:2, Insightful)
Culture (Score:2)
Its a University - you go there to take in and then build on the intellectual work of others. The "intellectual property" culture is what needs fixing.
Why not? (Score:2, Interesting)
That's just financing that industry (Score:2)
And you'd think tuition was already expensive enough!
I like the idea (Score:3, Interesting)
There are practical obstacles and I can see that
So firstly they have to make it an optional fee not hidden in tuition fees. Secondly, they must find ways to block campus p2p, so one subscriber cannot spill the goods. Perhaps smart routers that block p2p ports, and tcp with such headers etc? of ALL known p2p programs?
In theory I support it anyway.
Why students are smarter in California... (Score:5, Insightful)
''I really don't think they understand or believe that illegal file-sharing is the same thing as going into Tower [Records], grabbing a CD off the rack, and running out the door with it,'' said Scott Hervey, chairman of California Bar's cyberspace law committee.
Um, that's because file-sharing isn't shoplifting.
''We have to somehow fix the culture that thinks it's OK to rip off people's intellectual property rights,'' [UC Berkeley' CIO & Assc. Vice Chancellor Jack]McCredie said.
As opposed to fixing the culture that thinks it's OK to rip off the public domain? Which, ultimately, costs the public, society, and culture more: KaZaa, or obscene copyright terms? Why are we in a place now where even university officials are more willing to attack the integrity of their own students than to criticize the practices of a small cartel of international media conglomerates that withhold creative output from the public domain for longer than most of their students will be alive? What is the bigger problem? Why not address that problem, instead of focusing on what is little more than one of it's side-effects?
--Michael
Who gives a crap? (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone else sick of hearing about music this, music that?
Who honestly cares? I throw out the Entertainment section, and I switch channels when the dumb blond "entertainment" "reporter" comes on to tell us about who wined+dined her the best in the last few weeks(ie, which movies she feels like mentioning). I cringe when the regular reporters start talking about revenue figures of movies or albums, or announce it as mainstream news that some movie/album is due out soon...even worse, when they start promoting upcoming programming smack in the middle of their news program. "Thanks Judy. And in other news, join us Thursday night at 9pm for a special on actor's nosehairs!"
I frankly don't give a crap. Music and movie figures seem to always be clamoring for attention, desperate for it- further, they seem to be the only people really fascinated by their industry. I listen to music occasionally. I go to the movies or rent a movie even less- in both cases, because I have many other things to do and neither is producing material I'm even remotely interested in. Music seems, at least to me, to be a small part of most people's lives, its presence VASTLY overhyped by(surprise) the media.
Selection would probably still suck... (Score:2, Interesting)
But students are skint. (Score:2, Interesting)
Find another plan... (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Download music for free
2) Distribute music to others
So, these kids could then legally fill up gigs and gigs of MP3s until they feel all warm and cuddly inside, but how will this stop them from sharing it with others? All it takes is a few students to have Kazaa running in the background, and piracy still reigns on campus.
It sounds as if the president of the college wants to try and wash his hands clean of all liability, but I doubt that this will stop the RIAA from wanting to tar and feather him.
Others help RIAA make money? (Score:2)
Normally, things work the other way arround. Industries that don't evolve their business model overtime dies. They rarely get help from other industrie in finding way to get a profitable business model.
But now we have this guy trying to solve the RIAA problem (piracy) without being asked for help. And on top of that some
another Fee (Score:2)
If they do this, then... (Score:3, Funny)
University gas stations and grocery stores next? (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be like a university president reacting to incidents of grocery store shoplifting by mandating that every student buy his groceries through the university. It's not reasonable, and it's yet another business that a university has no business being engaged in.
From a legal standpoint, universities might have the responsibility to make a reasonable effort to make sure that their networks aren't being used illegally, but turning to this solution appears to be a step in the wrong direction -- and it adds yet another cost to those who want to attend college. Of course, I feel the same way about athletic fees and activity fees that college students are forced to pay without wanting to.
library? (Score:3, Interesting)
At my alma mater [lawrence.edu] (which has a pretty good music school), the library has all sorts of recordings. Okay, for the music students, much of it's classical, but a bunch of it isn't. Like checking out books, you're allowed to make copies for scholarly reasons, but not personal reasons. The honor system was, I'm very sure, broken all the time, but it's one idea.
Oh wait... nobody uses that silly physical library anymore...
the university (Score:3, Interesting)
Too many people now think that the university is nothing but a holding tank before they reach the real world, and the only thing that makes the holding tank bearable is having as much entertainment as possible.
If you spent more time at college being entertained then you did getting educated, you shouldn't have gone. College is not for everybody. It shouldn't be an option for hedonistic entertainment freaks.
It's a Novel Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Yup, just about every college/university has a band with a following. Somewhere out there, is a group you will like. Trust me, you will! So the P2P network that the schools set up will share the talents of their students with other schools and in the process down the RIAA at the same time!
It's simple, the SGA (Student Government Association) sponsors the web site. They in turn get the students to put their works in to the school's system. The bands obviously still own the music, but it's freely available to the rest of the network (get your name out there sort of thing). The school's bandwidth (let's face it, they are paying for it whether it is used or not) is then used to spread the music to the other participants (sometimes over I2)!
Schools across the country can simply join in by setting up a proper system for storing the music by the students and joining the P2P system. Each OGG (down with MP3) holds a URL to a University sponsored page for the music group so people can learn about the group, find out where they are playing next. Maybe even book the group to play at their school, which is what the SGA does (at least ours did). To find a type of music, just hit the systems search engine, which is tied to the rest of the network.
Are their problems with the idea? Yeah, but I can find problems in a Utopian society too! The point is, the kids get their music, they get it fast, and they get exposure. The University comes out with a win, and thumbs a proverbial nose back at the music Industry for being snobbish and greedy and a total {insert explitive here}.
As If Tuition Wasn't Expensive Enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, like students that can get the same music for FREE.
If the recording industry wants collge students to start buying music when they're already in a bad shape financially and it's free on other P2P channels, they should wake up.
Although if the university just added the legit P2P charge to tuition... That's all they need to do.
Re:I guess tuition isn't quite high enough yet. (Score:2)
Huh? Since when would campus licensing even know about such machines? If some techie from Computer Services came to my dorm room and demanding to see what software I was running, I would tell him to screw off.
Re:I guess tuition isn't quite high enough yet. (Score:2)
Re:PSU - smart (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not an incentive (Score:2)