No renting music for me. It's definitely more expensive than the "all you can download, just 5 bucks a month" model, but personally I like having more control over my tunes, where they're stored, and what I can do with them in the way of moving them from computer to computer, burning them to CD, re-ripping them to mp3, and most importantly, I still have them if I don't feel like paying some monthly fee. That's the big thing about the music rental services that irk me to no end, if I ever decide to save a little money by taking a hiatus from the "all you can eat" downloading and cancel my service, my music is ZAP-dead, and I can't listen to it anymore. I'm locked into call-home DRM (unlike iTunes protected AAC) and there's nothing I can do about it. But above all of that, I don't want to be locked into an endless contract just to listen to a track I bought months ago, and then if I decide I don't feel like paying the monthly fee I'm out all of my music. No thank you. I'm sure it'd be great for people who want to download a TON of music at one time and are sure they'll never get tired of it, or alternatively people who can beat the system and rip the DRM from their tracks and keep them working after they cancel the service, but for the average person, I appreciate paying a bit more to really, truly own my music. Just my opinion for my circumstance, I understand there's a market for music rental services, but I think claiming that all digital music services will be rental in the future is some pretty wild hyperbole.

The music providers are doing their best to shift their users to renting rather than buying. The RealMuxic site recently changed from track/album buying to "subscription", which is the next step toward renting.

I mean borrowing is still my preferred choice. I say borrowing because I buy the album about 99% of the time. I prefer to try before I buy. Which is why I am strongly considering joining the iTunes cult. Mainly because iMP3 everything. I have a Hard Drive in my Jeep, My comp, My living room, my MP3 player and at work. Plus I am tired of boxing up all those CD cases after I rip my music and spread it on all my drives. I aggree with phoenix, saying everyone will give in and start renting is a huge strech. Especially since a lot are still 'borrowing'. I think renting is a crazy idea. It's the same reason why I bought a house and stoped living in an apartment. When I walk away I want something to show for it. Not just a hole in my pocket.

I vote rent... I don't want to manage stuff, but I want stuff available on demand. That's why I use Netflix and why I subscribe to XM. Pandora is renting without a fee and works well in the office.

I have no interest in purchasing music online, whether the purchase is to buy a song or rent it. First, these songs use lossy compression. Second, they use DRM (Digital Restrictions Management). I do not steal music, nor to I allow others to copy what I've purchased. But I *do* reserve for myself fair use rights. So, the only digital music I will buy is a CD, since I can rip it myself to any format and any quality I desire.

I like the music I own to be high quality 16 bit stuff (or lossless), so I've found a great approach by subscribing, finding what's actually worth $15, and buying and ripping those lossless into my permanent collection. This gives me the best variety and quality at home or on my WMA player.

I will NEVER subscribe! I only buy. I want to own the music so I can make my own compilations and listen to them whenever I want to. And I only buy from the higher fidelity sites like Real Networks and MusicMatch. So if they ever abandon the purchase options, the it is BYE BYE ONLINE MUSIC STORES! I use Windows Media Center PC's and they are a great way to have your own giant jukebox always easily available for listening to music.

If I buy a CD I can play it on any device I wish (OK...any CD player - my attempts to play a CD in my toaster have all ended in disaster ;-) ) without having to jump through any DRM hoops. I just pop the CD in and it plays. I don't feel inclined to pay the same amount of money for lower quality music that is tied to one particular device (or some arbitrarily small number). The "burn-followed-by-rip" option is not a good solution: apart from being a tedious pain to do, performing the compression step twice degrades the quality even further. Also, I hate the fact that if I buy an iPod now and fill it with music bought from the iTunes Store, my music is tied to an Apple device for all time: if I decide I want (for example) a SanDisk player six months from now I can kiss goodbye to my existing music collection. Ofcourse, the same is true if I buy the SanDisk now and want an iPod in six months time. Until the whole DRM thing is less imposing I think I will be giving the on-line music stores a miss.

I will never rent. All this digital rights management has done is stop me from buying CD's. I listen to the radio while driving. Other than that I do without. When the music industry goes back to treating me like a customer I'll be back. Until then they can go - well you know what.

Buy, for all the reasons stated previously. The most important of all being that I I I I I, Me, Myself and I!!!! Should have total control over what I do with music, or videos too for that matter!!!!! So I say, BUY BUY BUY

CD's for me only. Downloaded songs from "Wally World" and ran into all sorts of DRM problems. I buy the CD and rip it for storage on my MP3. Say NO TO DOWNLOADS for Buying or Renting!!!

how can you backup something you rent? even "buying' at 99cents, is really renting, because you cannot recover the song if something happens to the storage device. Sampling the music so that you can pick the tracks to download to a CD would be the best of both buy/rent worlds.

I recently got into a discussion with someone who is whole-heartedly for the idea of renting, because it meant he could download $1000 of worth of music, try it out and then go and buy it on cd (which, btw was his preferred method of getting music). The economics of this are all wrong. Let's say you stick with the service for 10 years. On the Urge music service, that would mean you would pay $1500 over the course of those 10 years. Okay, let's say that in the course of those 10 years, you find a good 300 cds that you like and you buy them at an average price of $12 each. That's $3600 for those 300 albums. Add together the $1500 you've paid to the Urge music service and after 10 years, that means you've actually paid an average of $17 per cd. Hmmm, looking less economically appealing all the time. Not to mention the fact that you are completely beholden to Mr Gates for this music, and you have yet another piece of software on your computer phoning home to Microsoft asking Mr. Gate's permission just to listen to your music. Need I remind you of the whole Windows Genuine Advantage fiasco? Imagine that you wake up one morning and Mr. Gates says, "Sorry, you won't be listening to your music today." The value of the music you've downloaded? $0. Oh well, at least you've still got the 300 CDs in your collection that you've paid $17/CD for.

Oops, in the first paragraph that should have read "thousands of dollars worth" not $1000.

I subscribe to Y! for the all-you-can-eat, but when I find something I really like I buy a used CD. Or, even better trade for it at www.LaLa.com. Only $1 per trade. -B