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New rara.com music service
Tuesday 13 December 2011 17:13:26 by Andrew Ferguson

The market for online digital music services is being rapidly populated, but rara.com has launched with claims that the service is much simpler to use than previous services. The service has two subscription options:

£4.99 per month, with a 99p per month for three months introductory offer, that allows you to play music on PC, Mac or HP WebOS system.
£9.99 per month, with a £1.99 three month introductory period, that adds support for Android devices via an application and includes an offline mode so that you can play music without incuring mobile data charges.

The basic service is advert free, and claims to use Dolby Pulse to provide a music quality close to or matching a CD, but with a file size of just 1MB per track. With single track MP3 files often weighing in at 3 to 4 MB then this means that people with slower broadband services or low usage limits may find the service more attractive.

Tracks downloaded for play in offline mode, are DRM protected, which means if you wanted to transfer them to a USB stick for playing in the car it would not work. An additional restriction is that for each account only three devices can be signed in at any one time. The question really is, are people going to be happy paying for a music rental fee, where they never really have a copy they can keep?

[ Topic: Content | 16 comments | link to this item ]

Comments

Posted by Apilar 5 months ago
No iOS support at launch? Fail.

Posted by MrTAToad2 5 months ago
I do think my lack of interest in music is quite a blessing at times...

Posted by tommy45 5 months ago
Using DRM, that's sure FAIL!!! ( you buy music but cannot play it on different devices?? FAIL)

Posted by TonyHoyle 5 months ago
So they charge the same as spotify, but won't even let me look at their website to see which record companies they have onboard (unsupported browser... I thought that shit had gone away by now).

I'll believe those size/quality claims only when I hear it.

The device limit is the killer. Spotify has no limit.

Posted by TonyHoyle 5 months ago
Btw. The reason these no ios is probably because the whole thing is flash based according to the FAQ.

Posted by RobFlet 5 months ago
So, if I play a track on the PC out of my high spec USB interface, into my mixer and route that back to the input of the USB interface and record that output ;-)

Posted by zyborg47 5 months ago
i seen this on the BBc news site, something about 60% of consumers had never used a digital music service, I have used Amazon for one song, but to be honest I prefer to buy the Cd, it is cheaper and better quality.

I use MP3's on my phone, but I prefer to rip them from the Cd myself in the quality I want.

As been said no good having music that can only be played on a computer.

Posted by RobFlet 5 months ago
Agreed. I still buy CD's ... don't use any form of mp3 player at all (don't think my phone will play one, and even more sure there's no way to get one on to it! And it doesn't have a camera).

Posted by otester 5 months ago
If the artist is independent, buy from their site, otherwise torrent/usenet, no DRM!

Posted by fibrebunny 5 months ago
Can't see the point in leasing music, if the site goes all your music goes with it and your money will have been wasted. Whereas if you purchase outright, you may have less music but at least (assuming DRM free)its yours.

Posted by andrew ( staff member) 5 months ago
On the leasing side, perhaps what the music industry needs is an Abta style backstop, i.e. what people have available offline/downloaded that uses DRM will still see a DRM server for X years.

Posted by RobFlet 5 months ago
Well Andrew, now that is a very good idea ... so when are you going to set up your servers and offer this out? For a small fee, you could be the saviour of thousands of DRM casualties ... ho ho ho ... has nobody thought to talk to the music industry? Just seems sites are popping up all the time now, and of course, some will fail and take your leases with them.

Oh, life was much easier when we used cassette tape ;-)

Posted by djfunkdup 5 months ago
Oh, life was much easier when we used cassette tape ;-)

don't be silly.life has never been easier :)

Posted by rizla 5 months ago
I tried the DRM route. All of the services folded leaving me with unplayable music.

As a consequence I won't touch anything with DRM unless there is a physical product which does not require online verification.

Anyone who does purchase DRM'd stuff - best of luck to you, it WILL go tits-up and you WILL be left out of pocket.

Posted by m0aur 5 months ago
Why pay for any so-called premium service. Spotify free and Pandora have allowed me to accumulate 80,000 tracks for free. £15 for Replay Music to record and auto-split/tag anything that is output from the soundcard, was money well spent.

Posted by LeyaK 5 months ago
I kinda like it, I created an account just yesterday and it's ad free, they have a simple and clean design and, at least for the next 3 months I am gonna keep my account; it's like..99cents and on itunes you only get one song with that money. So, for now, I am quite satisfied with it. Plus, I can ahve all the music I want and save it to my computer with audials: http://audials.com/en/how_to_rip_record_internet_radios/rara.html. It's cheap and for me it totally does it. Of course, it's no Spotify, but there is plenty of time to have things improved.