Why College Kids Are Turning Down Free (Legal) Music

Mon Jul 24, 2006 7:05PM EDT

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Going to college this fall? Napster might be free. Not the old Napster—the one where you could download all the music you wanted and keep it forever. That was free already.

No, this is the new Napster. The commercial Napster that lets you play any song up to three times for free, after which you have to subscribe to Napster and buy the track. (You can also buy unlimited access for $9.95 a month and keep all the songs you download for as long as you keep paying for the service.)

But you, if you're a college student at one of about 120 U.S. institutions of higher learning, can get the unlimited access for nothing at all (the link is just an example of an offer at University of Miami). Download all you want. There's only one catch: It's only free while you're in school.

And it's that catch that is keeping college kids from signing up. The Wall Street Journal is reporting on this odd phenomenon [PDF link], which notes rightly that getting college students to turn down something free takes some doing. But college kids aren't saps: They know there's no such thing as really "free." Here, the gambit is simple: Napster is giving away the service because it wants to "hook" you for the long term. It figures that you'll have amassed so much music after four years that you'll have no choice but to keep paying for it.

What would you do? It's hard to blame the kids for shying away from Napster, even at no cost. The restrictions are just too heavy. The WSJ makes the case against Napster (and, of course, for arch-enemy iTunes) far more eloquently than I have the space to do here, but it's definitely worth a look. Whether you have a child going to school in the fall or you're headed there yourself, give the story a spin and see what you might be getting into.

Comments on Why College Kids Are Turning Down Free (Legal) Music

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  • 2 Posted by cnull on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:27PM EDT Report Abuse

    click on "odd phenomenon"

  • 3 Posted by cosette_2003 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:29PM EDT Report Abuse

    I attend one of the universities that's offered Napster for free, but VERY few people used the service. No one wants the strings on the music, when we can share songs for free on DC++ or other peer-shares. I think the person in the WSJ article said it perfectly: "People still want to have a music collection." They don't want the tethers that DRM tries to impose. Until the RIAA figures this out, and comes up with a more successful business model, they won't have much success stamping out file sharing, no matter how many lawsuits they send.

  • 4 Posted by reneelikeshugs on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:36PM EDT Report Abuse

    There will always be free illegal music, and soon there will be a way to get the free Napster downloads, copy them, and save them a different way on your harddrive and when time comes to graduate, you will still have your music. But on the other side, how many college kids leave college listening to the same stuff they listened to when they started? Being a couple years into college, I can honestly say that my musical collection has changed and grown in ways I never thought it would.

  • 5 Posted by simple_sketchatist on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:23PM EDT Report Abuse

    As a college student, I think this sounds like a great program. One big reason why people download illegally is because they don't have the money to buy a complete album in its complete physical body, all art and lyrics included. The reason why we go to college is to make money. After college, when we're high-class graduates with important jobs, we can go buy all the music that we accumulated and appreciated so much during our college years. If people are so afraid of getting hooked on Napster, maybe they should practice some self control.

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