http://news.umr.edu/news/2005/songs0805.html

UMR offers students legal access to 1.7 million song titles
08/31/2005 10:56 - UMR Public Relations

Beginning this semester, the University of Missouri-Rolla is offering its students legal access to 1.7 million song titles.

Through a partnership with Cdigix, a leading provider of legal digital music, UMR students may subscribe to the service beginning in September for a monthly fee of $3. The students will have access to the music any time they have access to a computer, on campus or elsewhere.

“This does help eliminate some piracy worries associated with downloading music,” says Brian Buege, director of networks and computing systems at UMR. “But the main reason we’re offering digital music is to provide more entertainment options for our students.”

In a recent survey, 94 percent of incoming UMR freshmen said they plan to bring a computer to campus. Sixty percent said they’ll bring their own laptop; and 87 percent indicated they spend at least an hour on the Internet – in most cases many hours – each week.

Known as Missouri’s premier technological university, UMR has an enrollment of about 5,500 students.

“The students we have coming in are 21st century students,” Buege says. “The information technology department wants to improve the virtual campus and expand recreational offerings that are electronic. Much like a landscaper improves the physical aesthetic of the campus, we are focused on improving the electronic aesthetic.”

The music provided by Cdigix is distributed over a local area network, yielding a fast and secure way for students to access legal content that doesn’t slow the university’s Internet connection. But students will still be able to access the information through the UMR website.

UMR faculty, staff and graduates may all take advantage of the music offering through Cdigix by subscribing at a monthly rate of $5.99. Individual songs can be purchased and retained for life by members for an additional fee of 89 cents each.

Anyone sign up for it?

Sounds really nice. I'm definitely interested. Where do you sign up for it, anyway?

Anyone know what the DRM on this stuff is? Anyone know how to crack whatever it is so that we can acctualy take it with us on decent mp3 players?

What I'd like to know that the press release left out (mostly technical details):
- Dependence purely on streams, or are downlodable files available?
- Audio quality? (Lossy or lossless, codec, bitrate, samplerate, etc)
- DRM? Can I slap this on an older portable music player and it work?
- Dependence on OS? Are players available for non-Windows machines? Can I get source to build the player on my exotic unix boxes?
- Authentication? Do we need to prove who we are to a central server to listen? What happens when this company goes bankrupt? Will "lifetime" songs still work?
- Does it work for off-campus systems? I assume so since "graduates" were mentioned, but you never know for sure unless you ask.

Nicely done, IT. I sincerely applaud your decision to make this an optional service. I've heard at other universities it was a compulsory fee, thus taxing everyone for services only a certain few could use.

I love how they're only making songs available in WMA format.

I did a little digging. It looks like yes it is only available in .wma format. You download as many songs as you like and play them whenever you like. If you don't log in at least once every 30 days they disable the songs.

Additionally, it appears as if you can then buy the "rights" to the song for ~$0.89 each to do with them as you please without all the DRM issues.

They also are going to have some sort of TV shows/movies of some kind availiable, but I'm not sure what will all happen with that. We'll see what happens as more details come through.

they want something affordable to deter from piracy, the thing with piracy is cds are too expensive for the rewards.. at least for me, so why charge 89c a track? for a cd, like the newest foofighters, thats 20 trackts, thats 18 dollars-ish. when you can get it in a store for 15, which is still outrageous in my mind.

in markets outside of america most songs are released in singles, with 1-2 good songs per 4, for a cheap rate, if you wait, you can normally get the a full cd, which normally average 15-20 songs, at a rate that is still mcuh cheaper than american cds. as an importer i noticed this anyway. really, its simple, americans can pay more, so they make us pay more, so we pirate.

arrr matey, thar be a bad deal of a plan.
i'm not a big fan of streaming music anyway, and i am very curious about the bitrate of the streams.

europe cds are about 1.5x as much as they are here. i saw them on sale for 15euros, cds here go on sale for 10 bucks

CDs are definately still better than buying online music. at least i have a copy of it in my hands that i can back-up legally. rather than having to go through the hastle say if your HD crashes and you want to get back all the songs you paid for.

and 89cents for a .wma piece of crap? cmon now, that shit should be free

Is our tuition paying for this? This is worthless.

where is the link to the service or the link to some page that will tell me when this will be available
I guess I'm looking for some more info because the article said nothing as far as info for students

I'd say its going to be less than a week after they start this service that someone figures out how to get around whatever their encryption is, and convert them from encrypted .wma into unencrypted .mp3.
I understand what IT is intending with this project, but I have doubts as to how useful its really going to be. Unless IT runs multiple local servers and ups internal bandwidth, I cant see being able to stream videos of any decent quality.
I'll sign up for it, but only if IT releases more technical specifications on exactly what I'm getting.

You guys will complain about anything won't you?

Sorry, that's all I know. It came out over the econnection and I don't know anything about mp3's or DNR's or whatever ya'll are talking about. My computer FU is weak.

This service sucks, it's only wma at a shitty 128 bitrate. I would only consider it if they offered lossless or at least --standard mp3s or ogg vorbis.



I think it's standard wma encryption. Search "freeme wma" on google.

Have fun
-David