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More schools offer cheap music downloads for students
Mon Dec 13, 6:39 AM ET
By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY
More college campuses are adopting deeply discounted - and legal - digital music as the latest amenity for students.
Several top schools began offering these services in September, either free or highly subsidized. Now, student demand is spurring more university administrators to institute programs in January instead of waiting for fall.
"Our phones have been ringing non-stop," says Brett Goldberg, CEO of Denver-based Cdigix, which runs digital music, video and educational services at 11 campuses, including Yale and the University of Denver. "Administrators want to get something launched as quickly as possible."
Use of unauthorized file-trading services such as Kazaa and Morpheus - so-called peer-to-peer, or P2P, services - is highest at the university level, where super-fast connections and lack of parental presence have caused campus Internet networks to bottle up.
"What we hear from our students is 'We don't want to be sued,' " says Tom Warner, director of coordinated technology management at the University of North Carolina.
The recording industry has filed copyright-infringement lawsuits against nearly 7,000 online song swappers, many at campuses. "Our responsibility as educators is to do a better job of explaining what copyright is," Warner says, "and to offer students a legitimate alternative to the peer-to-peer services."
UNC has music services at four of its 16 campuses and in January will add two more, in Raleigh and Chapel Hill. Students can listen to songs for free, but have to pay to download - 79 cents to 88 cents a song.
The University of Michigan is asking students to pony up $2.50 a month if they want Cdigix when it begins next month. "I didn't want tuition dollars being used for entertainment," says associate provost James Hilton. He chose Cdigix because unlike competitors Napster (news - web sites), Ruckus Network and Rhapsody, it also offers educational programming, accessible via the closed campus intranet. Cdigix offers video movies on demand, as well. Some schools have reported huge acceptance rates by students. More than 1 million songs have been downloaded by Purdue students since Cdigix began in the fall.
But at the 31,000-student University of California, Berkeley campus, only 1,000 have signed up for Rhapsody. Like Michigan, Berkeley asks students to pick up the tab - and it's a low one, $2 a month, compared with the normal $9.95 monthly charge.
At those kinds of rates, both Rhapsody and Cdigix say they don't make much money - if any. The hope is to turn students into paying subscribers when they graduate.
Napster is free at Cornell. Senior Andy Guess says he uses it every day and hasn't set foot in a record store since the service came to the campus in September. "I listen to it all day long," he says. "It's really convenient for me."
Many Cornell students have complained that Napster is incompatible with their Apple computers, a situation not unique to Napster. Cdigix, Rhapsody and Ruckus are also not accessible on Apple computers without a work-around.
Additionally, songs purchased from the services won't play on Apple's massively successful iPod unless transferred first to CD.
Mon Dec 13, 6:39 AM ET
By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY
More college campuses are adopting deeply discounted - and legal - digital music as the latest amenity for students.
Several top schools began offering these services in September, either free or highly subsidized. Now, student demand is spurring more university administrators to institute programs in January instead of waiting for fall.
"Our phones have been ringing non-stop," says Brett Goldberg, CEO of Denver-based Cdigix, which runs digital music, video and educational services at 11 campuses, including Yale and the University of Denver. "Administrators want to get something launched as quickly as possible."
Use of unauthorized file-trading services such as Kazaa and Morpheus - so-called peer-to-peer, or P2P, services - is highest at the university level, where super-fast connections and lack of parental presence have caused campus Internet networks to bottle up.
"What we hear from our students is 'We don't want to be sued,' " says Tom Warner, director of coordinated technology management at the University of North Carolina.
The recording industry has filed copyright-infringement lawsuits against nearly 7,000 online song swappers, many at campuses. "Our responsibility as educators is to do a better job of explaining what copyright is," Warner says, "and to offer students a legitimate alternative to the peer-to-peer services."
UNC has music services at four of its 16 campuses and in January will add two more, in Raleigh and Chapel Hill. Students can listen to songs for free, but have to pay to download - 79 cents to 88 cents a song.
The University of Michigan is asking students to pony up $2.50 a month if they want Cdigix when it begins next month. "I didn't want tuition dollars being used for entertainment," says associate provost James Hilton. He chose Cdigix because unlike competitors Napster (news - web sites), Ruckus Network and Rhapsody, it also offers educational programming, accessible via the closed campus intranet. Cdigix offers video movies on demand, as well. Some schools have reported huge acceptance rates by students. More than 1 million songs have been downloaded by Purdue students since Cdigix began in the fall.
But at the 31,000-student University of California, Berkeley campus, only 1,000 have signed up for Rhapsody. Like Michigan, Berkeley asks students to pick up the tab - and it's a low one, $2 a month, compared with the normal $9.95 monthly charge.
At those kinds of rates, both Rhapsody and Cdigix say they don't make much money - if any. The hope is to turn students into paying subscribers when they graduate.
Napster is free at Cornell. Senior Andy Guess says he uses it every day and hasn't set foot in a record store since the service came to the campus in September. "I listen to it all day long," he says. "It's really convenient for me."
Many Cornell students have complained that Napster is incompatible with their Apple computers, a situation not unique to Napster. Cdigix, Rhapsody and Ruckus are also not accessible on Apple computers without a work-around.
Additionally, songs purchased from the services won't play on Apple's massively successful iPod unless transferred first to CD.