Thursday, February 10, 2005

Napster takes a radically different approach that essentially says: Why buy a little music when you can rent much more of it instead?

Consider that it costs about $15 for 15 iTunes downloads. But that same $15 would buy a month's worth of unlimited access to Napster's giant music collection. In short, for the cost of a single audio CD, Napster gives you access to thousands.

But unlike iTunes, you can't burn these songs to a CD and they will play only as long as your Napster subscription remains active.

The vision promoted by Napster argues that if you love music, really love music, you're better off leasing it. And there's some pretty compelling logic to support that view.

Figure it this way: Even if you buy a new CD every month, in five years you will still only have a modest collection of 60 CDs. That's hardly enough to satisfy even casual listeners, much less hard-core music lovers.

For that same expenditure, Napster says, you could have one of the biggest music collections in the world. Thousands of titles by hundreds of artists, all just a mouse-click away.

Such a collection would cost tens of thousands of dollars to buy, putting it out of the reach of all but the most dedicated - and richest - music fans. At $15 a month, it's affordable by almost anyone.

The buy-vs.-rent calculation only leans in favor of people who listen to a lot of different music. After all, if you're satisfied hearing the same handful of songs played over and over, month after month, you probably should just buy them and be done with it.

But music fanatics, families with diverse and changing musical tastes, and even people who just want hassle-free variety might decide that renting music beats owning it after all.