Remember Kazaa? That program many of us used to download music illegally (not me of course). Well they’re making a comeback, but this time it’s legal. Kazaa have moved away from a P2P platform and moved to an online music store where users are able to purchase their music legally.
Basically you pay a monthly fee of $20 and you can download as much music as you like. The catch? The songs you download will be WMA’s, which means any hope of attracting your average iTunes/iPod user is dashed, unless they are savvy (or bothered) enough to convert the files to MP3. You can also only use the songs you download on a maximum of 5 devices, similar to the iTunes DRM that was removed several months ago now. It’s no wonder Kazaa has received support from the big 4 record labels. While iTunes is making progress due to it’s large user base, other start ups (and comebacks) in the industry like Kazaa and Napster are having to succumb to the record labels wishes in order to move to a legal download platform. Hmm… you can read a more optimistic article on the future of Kazaa on SMH.
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