Rogers Music Store: Opinions?

[Mindfield]

Since I've been seeing ads for the Rogers Music Store I thought I'd look into it a bit.

They advertise $10 a month for unlimited PC music downloads, $15 for same with a mobile plan, and $20 for unlimited downloads on both PC and mobile. Reading further however reveals two important details:

- Without an unlimited plan, songs are $1.25 ea. iTunes is cheaper. However, these songs can be burned to an audio CD.
- With an unlimited plan, naturally you get as many downloads as you want and it costs only what your plan costs -- but the catch is that they're licensed. You need A) A valid license certificate on your PC and mobile device to play them, and B) a mobile device that is compatible with these locked-up MP3s. Furthermore, cancelling your Rogers store account revokes the license, making the MP3s you download under the unlimited plan unplayable. These songs also can not be burned to CD.

Not precisely the deal of the century when the fine print is magnified but still tempting to a degree -- my only problem is that outside of Rogers' own list of compatible music-playing phones I don't think any other device (other than the Rogers Music Player on your PC) can play these songs. They don't even mention what DRM method is used to protect the songs (PlaysForSure? Or some proprietary thing?), so even if I wanted to pay the rather high $1.25 per song cost, I don't even know if my iPod could play them.

Anyone looked into this, or even tried it? The library doesn't seem to be very large at the moment and the majority of it is fairly contemporary stuff (not what I'm looking for) so I'm thinking this may not be what I'm looking for. I already have an eMusic account, but they don't get the "big four" licenses because they refuse to DRM their songs, and there are some artists that are with one or another of the big four that I wouldn't mind downloading so an alternative would be nice.

Otherwise I'll just have to stick with iTunes.

[Tim]

Personally, I don't dig this thing about having to pay a monthly to be able to continue listening to the songs you downloaded. At least with iTunes, you can burn as many audio cds of the songs you buy as you want, and there's no subscription. I guess the one payoff might be the unlimited thing, but only if you continue to pay monthly.

[Mindfield]

Personally, I don't dig this thing about having to pay a monthly to be able to continue listening to the songs you downloaded. At least with iTunes, you can burn as many audio cds of the songs you buy as you want, and there's no subscription. I guess the one payoff might be the unlimited thing, but only if you continue to pay monthly.
That's the deal-breaker for me. With an unlimited plan, what you're really paying for amounts to on-demand radio without the streaming. Cancel the subscription, no more music, and the more music you download, the more of a bummer it will be if you cancel. From a marketing standpoint it makes perfect sense: The more people download the harder it will be to consider losing their library if they cancel, thus ensuring more people stick with the program. For those that just want to listen to music on their PCs at home, it's probably not a bad deal - $10/mo for as much music as you want for as long as you keep the subscription. It's cheaper than Pandora and much less "exploratory," you just can't take the music with you except on compatible mobile phones, and there the same rules apply.

Personally, I'll be a whole lot happier if and when the big four finally clue into the fact that DRM is counterproductive. EMI already wants to dump DRM. Unfortunately they're the smallest of the quartet so they have the least influence on the rest -- but if they dump it and their sales increase significantly it might prove to the rest what consumers already know.