When some
Universities tried finding an alternative service to illegal music swapping over
P2P, a few Universities
took on the controversial Napster service. Many students are unhappy
paying for a service they don't use as well as not being entitled to know
how much they are paying as part of their activities fee. Well, a few college campuses have taken on Cdigix, which offers a similar service to Napster, however students have the option to pay for the monthly fee if they wish to use the service.
Unlike the Napster service, the only investment the schools have to fork out for is the electricity cost to run Cdigix's servers that cache the content within the campus. THe servers just need to be mounted and plugged in. Cdigix directly charges the students a monthly subscription fee of $3.50 for unlimited access to its music, however the music will no longer play once the fee stops being paid. In order for students to keep any songs, transfer to CD or a portable device, Cdigix changes a further 89c per track to keep or transfer. Cdigix features a music library of over 1 million songs. If you copy, please show show your support by linking back to CDFreaks.
As some campuses are unsure if they can
be liable for students
who download and distribute copyrighted content as well as be faced with bandwidth hogging file sharing utilities, some are trying to find alternative services that would both free bandwidth and be legal to use. Unfortunately, even this service does not come without complaints, such as not being able to transfer music off the student's computers as well as being forced to use a particular browser to access the music service.
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Henderson State University in Arkadelphia and Lyon College in Batesville have decided to allow their students to download and lease any of more than 1 million songs through Cdigix, a digital media provider that specializes in legal file access for college campuses. Music fans will have to pay about $3.50 a month to use the program then 89 cents per song if they want to remove it from their computer to record or "burn" onto a compact disc or a portable digital music player. As long as students pay the monthly fee, they have access to the music. When they quit paying, they can no longer tap into the files. The bank of song selections will include tracks from top albums, according to sales data compiled by Nielsen Sound-Scan, said Cdigix's spokesman Laurie Rubenstein. "Across the board," she said, "if it's a major artist they are available." The full article can be read here. |
While many students oppose changing from the open MP3
format to DRM crippled
music, at least this is one service that does not force students to pay for something they don't want. However like Napster, this service does not offer the student the same freedom as they had with file sharing networks since most students listen to music on the move, rather than on their campus PC.
When students get music from file sharing networks, most build of fairly large libraries to carry about such as on an iPod. Unfortunately, if a student must pay 89c for every song they want to carry about and an iPod only supports DRM-crippled music from iTunes, then even this service may not be of much use to some.
Source: Arkansas Democrat Gazette
