Looking to boost its presence in the digital music market, America Online Inc. (AOL) has acquired music subscription provider MusicNow from Circuit City Stores Inc., AOL announced Thursday. more
The problem is that they don't "get it." They are designed by blue-suit types in a boardroom and never really understand how people want their music.
From their terms of service:
"your ability to transfer or make copies ("burns") of Purchased Downloads may vary..." When you purchase individual songs, you don't even have a consistent number of burn allowances that you can depend on!
The Member packages are even worse than other services, because you can't use the memberships to download music into your portable music player. According to their terms of service:
"Members will be able to listen to commercial free online streaming radio stations and play on-demand music offered on the Service ("On-Demand Streams"). Play On-Demand Streams can be accessed on up to three computers but are available for use on one computer per subscriber at a given time. An On-Demand Stream is initiated by selecting a recording while you are on-line, at which time an encrypted file will be transmitted to your computer for a contemporaneous performance of the recording which does not create a download or residual copy or file on your computer other than as temporarily required to render that performance as in the form of a buffer copy."
People get suckered into these membership agreements thinking that they can actually use the music only to find that it's no different from the streaming radio stations you can play for free with the iTunes software.
i also believe that people don't want to have to log into a website to download music to their music player. that's why itunes is so successful, you open up your music player and can purchase music directly from your music player
