When they envision the future of online music, music industry types still talk about "the celestial jukebox," dreaming of the day when music fans everywhere can access any song they want whenever they want it. That future is going to get a lot closer this year as some new music services begin to offer customers the ability to download as many tracks as they want to their MP3 players for a monthly fee. Sounds like a cool idea, right? I mean, I know bunch of people who pay $10 a month for a Rhapsody subscription so they can listen to whatever streamed tunes they want to on their PC. Would they pay another $5 a month to get those same songs on their portable player? You bet they would.
This month, I got a chance to try out one of the first of these portable subscription offerings, an add-on to Napster 2's subscription service called Napster2Go. It's a little rough around the edges, but then Napster's classifying the service as a preview offering. The company's planned a real push for portable subscriptions around the expected launch of Napster 3 early this year. But even in this beta-like state, it's clear that portable subscriptions are going to be a great way to find and try new music.
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News source: PCWorld
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