[Sigia-l] Buy or rent?

[Manu Sharma]

Ziya:
"I was actually a marketing counsel to Sony and worked on Walkman intro
to U.S. I know what Sony can do when it wants to
promote/market/merchandise a product line. I can emphatically say that
Sony is not doing that with any of their digital music hw/sw."

I know. Both, that you helped intoduce Walkman and that Sony's
performance in recent years has been far from impressive including
their foray in digital music. Even Sony admits to that [1].

I only contend that it's perhaps too soon to argue that non-Apple world
has given up on download-to-own business. I know they aren't thriving
but if I understand correctly, these are the only services that aren't
essentially evil.

Subscription locks you into a lifetime of rental and Apple restricts
your music to only their own player. It's only music downloaded through
these services that come with no such trade-off.

Ziya:
"I haven't yet found a satisfactory answer to buy vs rent in user
preferences."

There may not be a simple answer and there may be other alternatives
such as, micropayment or pay as you go. Hard to say without
understanding the context.

Manu.


[1] http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000090028445/