More Schools Offer Cheap Music Downloads for Students

"Several top schools began offering these services in September, either free or highly subsidized. Now, student demand is spurring more university administrators to institute programs in January instead of waiting for fall....

Some schools have reported huge acceptance rates by students. More than 1 million songs have been downloaded by Purdue students since Cdigix began in the fall.

But at the 31,000-student University of California, Berkeley campus, only 1,000 have signed up for Rhapsody. Like Michigan, Berkeley asks students to pick up the tab — and it's a low one, $2 a month, compared with the normal $9.95 monthly charge.

At those kinds of rates, both Rhapsody and Cdigix say they don't make much money — if any. The hope is to turn students into paying subscribers when they graduate.
Napster is free at Cornell. Senior Andy Guess says he uses it every day and hasn't set foot in a record store since the service came to the campus in September. "I listen to it all day long," he says. 'It's really convenient for me.' " [USA Today, via Furdlog via The Kept-Up Librarian]

I'll bet it's been even longer since Andy set foot in a library to get some music. When I talk about information shifting and The Heavenly Jukebox, I always ask if the audience thinks the kids accessing these services, and current Duke freshmen in particular who all get iPods this year, are going to visit their local public library for music after they graduate.

Not that circulating music is our main mission, but it's been a popular one, and these are our future taxpayers we're talking about.

Personally, I'll never give up Rhapsody the concept. You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead, virtual hands. I don't think either of my kids will ever buy a physical CD ever again.