Students Skip College Music Services

WSJdpatton writes "College students don't turn down much that's free. But when it comes to online music, even free hasn't been enough to persuade many students to use the digital download services colleges and universities are providing." I know that the Ctrax service offered by my current school — Temple University — and many others (it's "available to all college students with a '.edu' email address") has an ugly, awkward interface. Worse, the free (gratis) part is an expiring, "tethered" collection of music for those who use it; downloads to keep are fee-per-track.

Even crap isn't worth free

[WedgeTalon]

Just because a bag of crap is free doesn't mean it's worth the hassle of obtaining it.

TNSTAAFL

[maubp]

"College students don't turn down much that's free ... downloads to keep are fee-per-track."

Surprise surprise!

If most of the services charge for downloads you can keep, its hardly free is it? In either sense of the word.

Free...as in beer

[Opportunist]

Maybe. But to make free content interesting, it has to be free in the OTHER sense first. If it's free in the financial aspect, that's a bonus, but not the primary concern.

That's the main beef I got with DRM. Not that I have to pay per view, or that I should pay more or whatever. It is the fact that I cannot use the content I pay for in an enjoyable way. It's the tether attached, not the price tag.

Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle.

[skrolle2]

The Recording Industry Association of America says it has been happy with the progress the program has made so far. "Universities tend to move not all that quick to do things like this, so it's really quite an achievement," says RIAA President Cary Sherman.

Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle.

Insulting?

[Philomathie]

The biggest insult you can give a company has got to be to refuse their product when they want to give it to you for free...

Re:Even crap isn't worth free

[maubp]

Horse shit!

The free manure many farms give away is probably rather popular with keen gardeners. I could have done with some recently...

another reason

[playtheshovels]

The reason why I don't use ruckus (or any other paid download service) is because of the incredibly lackluster selection that all music stores have. This isn't their fault - I imagine it would be hard to get the rights to sell obscure Norwegian death metal band's albums, but it still means that I'm double clicking Azuereus more than anything else.

Artists you can't get on RIAA download services...

[afeinberg]

Ok, want a big reason this failed? College students have varied and wide-ranging tastes in music. Your typical college frat-rocker or indie snob most likely won't like the range of artists offered on the "free" services when compared to itunes or any decent bittorrent tracker.

I guarantee that 90% of music reccomended by sites like Pitchfork aren't available on these services. If they were, people would use them.

Re:No thank you

[schmiddy]

We also have CTrax available free at my school. Not many people use it, mainly because of the crippling DRM and crappyp interface. First, it requires you to use Windows + Internet Explorer + Activex plugins + Flash plugin + new Windows Media Player. That rules out a lot of students, myself included (though I tried for a short time). Then, of course, their whole clunky interface is done in Flash, is terribly slow, and just a general pain in the ass to use. They let you 'download' the WMA files from their service, but to actually play them, Media Player has to go through a godawful slow authentication process every single time you play the track. I assume the tracks will play in one of those ridiculous "Plays for Sure" portables, but I don't know anyone who has one (seriously.. who buys that crap!?).

I got so fed up with their stupid DRM that I even wrote a guide on how to get around it [slyengineer.com] using Audacity (clunky, but effective). Even with the ability to rip the tracks to mp3s using Audacity or similar, it just wasn't worth the hassle of their terrible interface in order to access their limited track selection. I remember at least a few letters in our school paper complaining about the service and what a waste of money it is (apparently some "anonymous donor" funded it.. ). It's too bad Apple are so stringent with their pricing, or they could work out great deals with Unis that people wouldn't hate so much. Maybe CDigix have cleaned up their act in the year or so since I've used their service, but I doubt it, and I don't see myself going back even though it is free.

Re:Napster contra IPod

[babbling]

It isn't possible to steal music unless it comes on CDs or tapes. If you meant that people copy it without permission, that's called copyright infringement.

Free...as in drugs

[bhmit1]

You got that right, but I prefer the "free as in drugs" metaphor here. They are trying to get you hooked and then charge you for it later. What no one in the industry seems to get is that people will pay for the "free as in speech" type, and there are enough that care to be legal to make it a worthwhile model despite all the piracy. The industry tries so hard to stop the pirates that they turn the legit users into thieves.

Re:what software?

[EvanED]

A lot of universities offer free music subscriptions to stuff like Napster.

I think I must be the oddball because I have gone to PSU and use Napster quite a lot. Don't know what I'll do when the subscription goes away to be honest.

I'll tell you why I use it over pirating from a P2P system:

1. While I have it, it's legal.
2. While I have it, it's no more expensive than P2P.
3. Using Napster doesn't mean that when it goes away I can't go to P2P to get the same music.
4. It's a lot easier to download from Napster than it is from P2P... no worrying about firewalls blocking inbound ports, no worrying about share ratios, no worrying about "remotely queued"
5. I've seen D/L speeds of 2 MB/s. (Yes, that's BYTES, not bits.) Let's see you get that on P2P. (True, that's not reliable, but it's rare that you'll see a transfer go at under, say, 100 KB/s. At the same time, it's not uncommon to see P2P dls go at, say, 1 KB/s, especially when you take into account #4.)
6. It's a lot easier to find stuff I want on Napster, because they have all of the metadata correct. I can easily find all the tracks on an album, by an artist, etc. without having to worry if people are providing all of them.
7. I DON'T have to sort through 10 different versions of the same song that are all different somehow and try to figure out which one to get.
8. I DON'T have to worry about downloading a song and getting static, which has happened before.

Now, there are of course some drawbacks, such as it's harder to take it with you if you go on a trip, listen to in Linux, or keep after graduation (though none are impossible), and you have to deal with a really crappy interface, but there are a LOT of benefits over straight P2P.

These people don't get it.

[gfxguy]

So you have a college students that want something, and another group that offers them something else and is suprised that the reaction of the students.

Does this not describe the entire recent history of the RIAA?

Re:Napster contra IPod

[gid13]

True. It's worth mentioning that in the US at least, the penalties for copyright infringement are FAR harsher than those for stealing. Compare the max penalties for sharing a CD worth of songs (hundreds of thousands of dollars per track, if I remember correctly) to stealing a CD (I don't know, but I guarantee it's not hundreds of thousands).

My University signed with Ruckus

[coyotecult]

Here's their site. [ruckusnetwork.com] I haven't had the chance to try it out yet, because it's Windows only, and right now I'm on a Mac laptop only. Them's the breaks. I know the University doesn't have any responsibility to support less common OSes, but their bookstore is an Apple dealer and the certified repair shop for Apples in town. They showcase Apple machines--all of the laptops, iMacs, and the PowerMac--and just one Windows machine. Because of this, there's a decent amount of Mac laptops on campus. I see them around.

Other students don't like it because they can't put any music onto their MP3 players where they listen to most of their music, unless they pay, and it won't work on the ever popular iPod period. (I don't have one, but that's the majority MP3 player at my school, and the bookstore has a copious display case dedicated to them, too.) That's not surprising, of course, since Apple doesn't license their DRM out. The only MP3 players that work with Ruckus are ones with Microsoft's Playsforsure with subscription services. Evidently, having Playsforsure isn't quite enough to be sure it will work. Ruckus also serves as a movie serving network, but our campus hasn't had that running yet. The student organization is currently investing in the expensive on-campus download servers required to operate that service.

This article on BusinessWeek [businessweek.com] says that Ruckus can net anywhere from $10 to $100 dollars a student. I'm really just hoping my university is closer to the $10 side of the spectrum.

I refuse to use CTrax

[Kaptain Kruton]

My university allowed on-campus students to download music to their systems for free from CTrax. However, they dropped it during the spring. The reason is that nobody used it. It is not because they did not want free music, far from it. But when the service is much more trouble than it's worth, the people will just turn to other sources. I didn't use it for three reasons.
A) The interface was poorly designed and implemented in my opinion. A poor interface will stop a lot of people.
B) It forced the use of Internet Explorer on its site. I refuse to use IE. It is not because I am anti-MS, but it is because I have had serious problems in windows created by security flaws in IE. Furthermore, this dependency on IE screwed users of other OS's.
C) All of the music was wma format with DRM. I don't like DRM. Not only that, I fairly frequently reinstall windows on my machine because I frequently change hardware and/or toy with my system in various ways. Those files don't like being used after windows has been reinstalled due to previously stated hw changes.

Because of these problems, I found other sources for music.

Re:Even crap isn't worth free

[C0rinthian]

In any case, if I'm offered a "legal" means to download the song then why can't I simply obtain that song via different means that may be faster (such as the DC++ network we had running at Purdue for a while, or via torrents)?

Because then you'd no longer be an advertising target?

WTF are universities even involved?

[DoofusOfDeath]

When my dad when to college in the 50's, it was pretty affordable. The university offered the following services: classes, access to professors, labs, libraries. As nicities that also had housing, food, and athletic facilities.

Fast forward 50 years. Now the universities seem to be some kind of theme park, and as the mafia expression says, everyone pays. Why the hell are universities so much into the entertainment business that they're offering students involuntary music service subscriptions? Liability issues aside (I don't think the RIAA could win such a case against a university anyway), this is just f*@*ing ridiculous. Univerities do NOT need to be county clubs that happen to offer classes to interested sober members.

Ungrateful

[Mr_Silver]

Worse, the free (gratis) part is an expiring, "tethered" collection of music for those who use it; downloads to keep are fee-per-track.

So let me get this straight ... you get access to a large selection of music with mildly annoying DRM for free but if you want a non-expiring version, then you have to pay for it?

If you think this is poor, woe betide you when you get out into the "real world" as you'll find out that no-one here gets free unlimited downloads in that way and, shock horror, also has to pay for non-expiring versions of the music they like.

Personally, I think its a bit much you complaining about something for free which is obviously being paid for by someone else, but there you go.

Re:Napster is perfect for me

[JPribe]

Well, aren't you a rare breed.

Re:Even crap isn't worth free

[FooAtWFU]

Not only is the CTrax web download interface, umm, "absolutely pathetic", that's just the beginning of things. Even if you just want to play the music you've downloaded, the darned thing keeps crashing [flickr.com].

This is still the sort of thing colleges spend money on, instead of, oh, say, that long-overdue raise for faculty...

Re:+5 Insightful? Oh please...

[kiwimate]

Simple ethics and morality. Forget the pretentious nonsense and the lecturing about the immoral RIAA for a moment...

If you're being charged for a CD and the music's not being offered for free download on the band's web site in the format you desire, then that means that everyone involved with that production -- musicians, session musicians, recording engineers, graphic artists, marketers, etc., etc. -- put their time in to an effort that they knowingly expected would be sold.

If you disagree with that philosophy then at least have the courage of your convictions to just not buy it and say "I object to this premise on moral grounds, therefore I will forgo the pleasure of listening of that song". Anything else is hypocritical self-serving nonsense.

Re:Keep stuff after graduation?

[andymadigan]

Read the license to the MSFT software you have, you're allowed to continue using academic licensed stuff after you graduate. There's nothing to enforce (At least that's what the MSDNAA site says).

Re:+5 Insightful? Oh please...

[edmicman]

It reminds me of the MPAA ads before a DVD I rented the other day:

Would you steal a car? Would you steal a purse? Would you steal a cellphone? Then why would you steal a movie?

No, I wouldn't steal a car. But if I could magically make an exact duplicate of the car, leaving the original intact and available to it's owner, damn right I would copy it. Same for the cellphone, money, etc.

What will happen to copyright law when the Jetson's style cloning machine becomes reality? :-P

Re:+5 Insightful? Oh please...

[Maxo-Texas]

And exactly how many of those get a cut when I buy a copy of Abbey Road which was made over FIFTY years ago?

Most of them are DEAD man-- I wish my heirs would get paid for the rest of time for the work I do every day.

I support a reasonable copyright period. The current copyright period is not reasonable.

here:

[YesIAmAScript]

March 8th, 1951.

http://cms.westport.k12.ct.us/cmslmc/resources/ros enbergs/mar81951.pdf [k12.ct.us]

"The Government told a jury in Federal Court here yesterday that it would produce evidence that the three defendents in this nation's first atom bomb spy trial had conspired to steal and deliver to the Soviet Union "the one weapon that might well hold the key to the survival of this nation and the peace of the world - the atomic bomb"."

"Theft of Secrets Charged"

Your efforts to define the English language to exclude ideas you don't like (a particular form of theft) is Orwellian in itself.