Research into music downloading and surrounding issues is being undertaken by an MBA student at the University of Westminster. The title of the project is 'An Analysis of the Effectiveness of Subscription Services in Counteracting Illegal Downloads of Music from the Internet'.

The music industry has been fighting illegal downloading of music since Napster and it continues to fight on many fronts, legal, technical, PR and others. For the first time in the industry's history they are not in charge - the consumer is - and they simply don't seem to know how to handle it.

Their latest way of dealing with it is setting up subscription services. A few of them now have content from all of the major labels, namely pressplay, Rhapsody and MusicNet. However, users of P2P services, FTP servers and other services which provide free access to music downloads are still outnumbering subscribers to the industry's services by far. Ultimately, is this going to work?

The research explores the issues involved and asks whether those who currently download for free are willing to move to subscription services. It also asks why they would and why they would not as well as exploring the demographic profile of those who download. An on-line questionnaire has been set up for the purposes of the research and anyone who downloads music for free is asked to take part by completing it. The questionnaire can be found at: www.iceland-uk.org/mba

The website also gives some further information regarding the research and an e-mail address for enquiries.

People don't want to deal with subscription services....if people had it their way...when they downloaded music that wouldn't even have a user anme on KaZaA because that shit doesn't matter to them. Just getting the music does.

The biggest problem with subscription services is that they dont have the variety that p2p offers. It's not just the music of today, it's music that has been out of print and unavailable any other way. The first services with severe restrictions through DRM, being hard to use (I remember when EMI tried a program that required 13 clicks to download a song, not exactly user friendly). The labels aren't providig what the consumers want, and as a result they are suffering because of it.

Not to mention that most of the subscribtion services want more per song than you would pay for on a regular cd. $.99 a song, get real. They don't have to pay to make the cd, that I bought to burn on, or my bandwidth that I used to download, or my printer ink and paper, if I want a label. So why do they get to charge more per song than what I would pay for a CD in a store with the same number of songs. I am sick of this crap. I download music, so what, I then buy what I like, but there is a lot I download I don't like and I delete it, so I don't buy much, expecially when for 3 to 4 dollars more I can buy a dvd (better value for my money) So may be if there was a better value for 16 to 17 dollars or cd cost WAY less money I would buy more but until then NO WAY!!!

Subscription services are essentially useless to the young teens and under. How will they pay? Begging parents to lend you their credit cards isn't easy or reliable. That means a significent part of the merket cant use those sites.

Of the rest, most just use p2p because its more convenient.

I agree there's a "young person" demographic that's not going to pay for any type of subscription service.

I, however, am a member of the tech-savvy-yet-relatively-affluent demographic who would pay a premium for the improved experience **if the service offered a complete catalog**

I rarely go browsing for music. Rather, I hear something on TV or the radio and want to get it instantly. If I can't find it in a few minutes I drop it. I don't have time to drive to the record store and I don't want to wait a week for Amazon to ship it.

For me, the perfect scenario would be for everything currently available on Amazon to be downloadable. With their 1-click checkout they'd get TONS of impulse purchases from me. For that I'd be willing to pay even slightly more than retail. I don't even care about individual tracks. I'd buy a sucky album if the single is good enough.

For me it's not about the money, it's a matter of convenience. My time is a valuable commodity and I'd pay extra cash to save time driving to a store or doing 20 variations of the same search on Gnutella trying to find some song.