Hmm, let me see...

£15 per album, ten tracks per album (yeah, I know, in the olden days you got 12 or even 15...),

Lets say I keep the album for 10 years (yes, I'm aware that some strange people actually keep their albums forever).

So I guess I'd be prepared to rent for maybe as much as 1p per track per month - provided the catalogue had good coverage of the last 60 years of music of course.

Any sellers? No?

Oh wait - I forgot to factor in that eight out of ten tracks on each album nowadays are dross. So /that's/ why it costs so much... they need to recoup the losses made letting made-for-TV 'bands' record badly-sung atonal dirges....

It's easy to dismiss the music subscription model if you haven't tried it, but for some of us it's a viable option. Whatever else their faults may have been, Yahoo performed two great services for us:

1. They offered the cheapest music subscription service by far, and the competition kept everybody else's price down. Their imminent demise has allowed Rhapsody to raise prices by 30% already.

2. They offered service in Canada. As all online music buyers know, the music industry cartels restrict licences to sell music regionally, and Rhapsody is tightly restricted to USA only. What are they going to do for the Canadian subscribers to Yahoo's service?

I suggest our Canadian friends sign up for Napster, which offers its service in Canada as well as England, Germany, Japan, and many others through its mobile service. I have been a NAPS subscriber for over two years...love it. You bashers really need to get over the concept of "owning" littel files of electrons hidden in a box under your desk. Music is enjoyed only when heard and the best way to hear the most music is via the subscription model. I was a nay sayer as well until I tried it.

With teenaged daughters whose musical tastes change every 5 minutes buying music to listen to forever is a waste of time and money in our household. The Napster subscription is equivalent to roughly one full price CD purchase a month, so it's much better than piles of CDs that may as well be coasters after a month or two. One subscription allows storage / playback on 3 PCs, so HDD failure isn't much of a risk.

... and it all works nicely again now I've dumped Pipex/Tiscali :-)