I rent songs all the time. Its basically napster's service.

The great thing about renting songs is I can try out albums before I
buy them, or if my to-buy list was longer than my budget allowed, I
can "rent" until I get the money to buy.  Or if there is a random song
I heard on the radio or tv show I really want to hear, or if I want to
resolve a disagreement about a song, WHATEVER, I can just look it up.

Napster's new service combines the renting (most tracks) with buying
(some tracks are buy only).  Renting means you can only play them on
select machines.  We have Napster-to-go which allows it on moveable
devices as well.

Why an ARTIST would want to rent their songs, I don't know since I'm
not an artist.  But it probably would have to do with the compensation
package I'd receive.  It is probably similar to iTunes or eMusic or
other places where you purchase, but I wouldn't know for sure.

Stacy

On 5/10/05, Stewart Mason <craigtorso@verizon.net> wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Josh Chasin" <jchasin@nyc.rr.com>
> >>>>Yahoo plans to roll out an aggressively priced online-music
> >>>>service Wednesday, in a bold move to undercut rivals and win
> >>>>consumers over to a music subscription model in which they rent
> >>>>songs rather than buy them. The new service, dubbed Yahoo Music
> >>>>Unlimited, will give users unlimited access to over a million
> >>>>music tracks for $6.99 a month or $60 a year.>>>
> >
> > Here's my question as an avid music consumer.
> >
> > Why would I want to rent my songs?
> 
> Well, for one thing, most audio software these days allows you to
> record streaming audio, which means that the difference between "rent"
> and "own" is one mouse click.
> 
> Not that I'm advocating this or anything, I'm just saying that it's
> not as easy as they might think to make sure people don't avail
> themselves.
> 
> S
> 
>