Dave's Download

Paying the Record Labels Over and Over Again

Comment

Posted: October 22, 2008

Record labels shouldn't be able to control what we do with our legally owned MP3 files, argues Michael Robertson within a post by Greg Sandoval in the Digital Media blog.

Robertson is the Web pioneer who's in a court battle with record companies over his MP3tunes.com, which lets users store their music on the Web.

The post was prompted by the launch of a new website, Lala.com. Lala struck deals with the labels and will charge us 10 cents each to stream songs we ostensibly already own. Robertson:

"This is about what users are allowed to do with their music. Are they allowed to put it on their phone and their game devices or on multiple PCs without paying the labels each time?"

More Dave's Download posts

Court cases don't help music fans

I'm not certain what licenses Lala.com paid to the music companies but it is so effortless to use their site. There are no ads and I can listen to almost every song I could think of. Maybe Robertson needs to just be in court all the time, but as a music listener I'm happy that Apple and lala.com decided to just license the music for me.

Rich McGinness of FL @ Oct 24, 2008 04:36:51 AM

Mischaracterizing the business model

The 10 cents is for unlimited streaming of songs that you don't already own. If you own the song you can upload it and listen to it for free. Not to be rude but you didn't even write that much in your blog entry and it was still wrong.

Tom of CA @ Oct 23, 2008 19:15:30 PM