Kazaa to return as subscription service

Kazaa is coming back from the dead.

One of the most recognizable brands in the history of illegal downloading is due to officially resurface, perhaps as early as next week, sources close to the company told CNET News. Only this time the name Kazaa will be part of a legal music service.

Altnet and parent company Brilliant Digital Entertainment attached the Kazaa brand to a subscription service that will offer songs and ringtones from all four of the major recording companies. For the past few months, a beta version has been available.

The company tried recently to ratchet up expectations with a series of vague, and what some considered misguided, press releases.

The site will open with over 1 million tracks. According to the blog TorrentFreak, the new Kazaa will offer unlimited downloads for $20 a month.

Kazaa was developed by Niklas Zennstr?m and Janus Friis and rose to prominence following the first wave of peer-to-peer networks. The courts effectively shut the company down when it ordered it to prevent users from committing copyright violations.

Kazaa is joining the growing number of former rogue file-sharing applications and services whose names are now being used for legal operations.

First came Napster, and just this week a Swedish software company revealed that it planned to relaunch BitTorrent tracking site the Pirate Bay as a pay service.

What hasn't been proven yet is whether any of the once outlaw brands can be used to make money legally.

[hankthedwarf]

Because this'll do better than the pay Napster is doing? When are these companies going to realize that illegal downloaders aren't brand loyal. They're loyal to whatever app or site is giving them what they want as easily as possible at that moment. It's why you're seeing them curse Pirate Bay now ever since the buyout. This business strategy is a proven failure.

And this is besides the fact that the Kazaa name might be the only internet name more unhip right now than either Myspace or AOL.

[tektaktyks]

agreed,one more reason its not going to work is that all the porn is gone...lol

[Ryan_Spahn]

Is this unlimited mp3 non DRM downloads? That's pretty cool if so, but $20 is too much and at $10 a month that would be more attractive to me! If it has any DRM forget it!

[terminalblue]

this isnt news...there website has been posting subscription content since January.

[karpenterskids]

After your subscription ends, do you have to delete all the songs?
If so...forget it. No way.


If not...I can download all the music I could want to listen to for quite a while (until more music comes out, of course), and stick with that...for just $20...it sounds too good to be true. Which is why I'm asking if you can keep the music or not.

[ofmyony]

I am pretty sure it will be short lived. Twenty dollars is to expensive.

[EventualHorcrux]

From "About Kazaa" page:

"The subscription package is for PC only, which means that you won?t be able to play those files on a portable music player. The files will remain playable while your subscription is active ? once your subscription ends, you will no longer be able to play those files."

[hankthedwarf]

So it's just as useless Spiralfrog was, except you have to PAY :D

[meaty_uk]

From the TOS:
"Full track downloads are protected using digital rights management ("DRM") technology "

FAIL!

[drbyte]

Why do they bother even putting stuff like this together. So many ways to get music now. The ways are set. Best buy is trying to pull back on cd/dvd sales in the real world. What's Kazaa going to do online?

[tektaktyks]

to make some money and bankrupt (but keep the money)

[magicmaster]

DRM protected ? Restricted portability
Expired upon termination of Subscription ? If the service discontinues, your songs become unplayable
Kazaa = Another unprofitable project

I = an idiot smart enough not to be lured into this trap.

[Lordcron]

Yeah...... I'm really gonna use Kazaa....... Look you have to understand why people even started turning music into alternative sources in the first place. Kazaa was popular BECAUSE it was a free source of entertainment. I pitty the fool who thinks he or she can make money off of something people have now come to know as poison. I'd feel like a fool to buy music from a place I use to get it for free and, how late to the game is this anyway. I and million of others have long ago started using Itunes and amazon for legal music. Legal music? LMAO! I'm an 80's teen right.... So I came from an era of if you can record it on a Cassette tape you had the song. No big deal. No one cared. I could record a song off the radio if I didn't have a dual cassette player. No one gave a rats patoot. So its really like the music industry just turned on us if you ask me. Kazaa is an expensive failure.

[big8news]

Kazaa is a subscription-based service brought to you by Brilliant Digital Entertainment (BDE) a leading online distributor of licensed digital content. BDE provides the means for record labels, film studios and software developers to market and sell their products to a worldwide audience of 70 million users. With the Kazaa service you get unlimited access to hundreds of thousands of CD-quality tracks for one low monthly fee.

For just $19.98/mo, you can download unlimited music files, and play those files on up to 3 PCs that you own. The subscription package is for PC only, which means that you won?t be able to play those files on a portable music player. The files will remain playable while your subscription is active ? once your subscription ends, you will no longer be able to play those files.

The subscription package also enables you to download unlimited ringtones to a single cell phone.

Unlike other music services that charge you every time you download a song, Kazaa allows you to listen to as much music as you want for one low monthly fee. This allows you to explore all the music you want without having to pay for every single track or album.

what a jock right people napster has people cover here they have better deal $ 5.00 unlimited your to your pc and 5 free mp3 s too mo

BOTH SERVICES DO USE DRM SORRY for there unlimited music the big 4 will not bee happy if there mp3s give like that i love if they did ( "napster " MP3'S don't have drm on theme )

[rojalde]

There are any other ways to download music free, like in BitTorrent protocol, No DRM. I dont like DRM music.

[mythrilfan]

> Is anyone paying attention to what happened to BitTorrent and Napster?

Are you?

[JEH]

DRM can be VERY effectively bypassed with a program called TUNEBITE. You play the music on your desktop computer and tunebite records it as a regular mp3 file. Tunebite itself uses Windows Media Player and will play and record the song 4x faster than real time. Tunebite does all the work. VERY easy to use!