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Rhapsody is the opposite: this service, specializing in mainstream music, has licensed songs from all the major labels. Users can't download songs, however; they can listen to them only on their computers as streaming audio files. (Whereas a downloaded song is transferred to your computer's hard drive, a streamed song can be listened to only while you're connected to the Internet.) Both EMusic and Rhapsody are furiously making deals with cable, DSL and other broad-band providers, hoping that consumers will be willing to pay a monthly music fee along with their bills for high-speed Internet connections. EMusic says it divides half of its profits among the pool of artists that users are listening to, while Rhapsody would not discuss the breakdown of its payments.
Subscription services like EMusic and Rhapsody are not currently looking for a teenage audience. They are going after original Napster users who have grown up and entered the work force. "Six months ago, if you said you paid for music, people thought you were the dumbest person on earth because the music was free," said Mr. Ryan of Rhapsody. "Now we're starting to feel a shift in our demographic, which is the 25- to 45-year-old music aficionado, people who love music and have a little more money than time."
Aram Sinnreich and Joe Laszlo of Jupiter Research, a company that focuses its analyses on the Internet, predict that during the next year digital music-subscription sites will become a primary music source for fans, and that by 2006, record labels will be making $1 billion from them. Today, however, the numbers are nowhere near that: the only subscription service that will release subscriber figures is EMusic; Rhapsody is estimated to have around 10,000 paid subscribers. One reason for the relatively low numbers is the extreme difficulty of signing up many recordings, including those of popular acts like the Beatles and Madonna.
In the meantime, services like Kazaa still have some two million users logged on at peak times, though Kazaa offers video, still images and computer program files in addition to music. If, however, EMusic had a better catalog, and Rhapsody offered actual downloads, users say it would be easy to see these subscription services succeeding. But others do not think this future will be so easy to attain.
Michael Haile, an online music consultant for record and Internet companies, says some record labels want subscription services to fail, including their own. "I think it's all a stalling or a public relations move," he said of major record labels' ownership of (or cooperation with) subscription services. "What they want to do is stop the piracy. If they make it difficult enough to get these services, it's going to force people back into record stores." Record companies, of course, deny this.
"Record labels know what consumers want," he continued. "We all do. They want a Napster you pay for. We all know that. But why would the labels want that at all? Making CD's is like printing money."
For those who see both peer-to-peer networks and subscription services as substandard, there is another route: not to go to record stores but to keep exchanging the music they have already transferred onto their hard drives.
"The subscription services and the peer-to-peer services are both completely outside of the scope of what people want," said Numair Faraz, a teenage Internet entrepreneur who was hired by the sponsors of the Grammys for his skill in downloading music. "They exist, and some people will pay for them, but the mass audience that used to use Napster uses nothing right now."
So what is a person with a broad-band connection, an 80-gigabyte hard drive and a portable MP3 player to do? "Trade among his friends and browse his collection from the old days," Mr. Faraz said.
