Word: morpheus
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...until they do - or rather, to make sure they're forced to get it eventually - long live Morpheus and its amazing, ever-expanding musical matrix of market forces...
...Enter Morpheus (available at Musiccity.com), developed by a Dutch company called FastTrack (yes, this is something else to thank Amsterdam for). The second you download it, you know it's different. There's no off-putting server sign-on sequence like in the Gnutella programs. No lengthy process of scanning for music on your machine like Aimster makes you go through. Just a search page that returns results at a speed not seen since Napster. This is partly the fact that FastTrack is so focused on the end user experience, and partly the fact that plenty of people are using...
...ironic that Morpheus should arrive on the scene as Napster takes a couple of sellout steps towards its long-sought legitimacy. Interim CEO Hank Barry was brushed aside for a Bertelsmann executive on Monday, moving the center of power a little further away from Fanning and closer to the music industry. Even though an appeals court overturned a lower court injunction and ruled that Napster can resume trading while it waits for a trial, this new-look Napster will not do so until a planned paid service is in place...
...Neither is the music industry as a whole, which still hasn't given us much indication of what the much-hyped MusicNet and Duet online services will look like (they're supposed to switch on this summer, but don't hold your breath). Is it any wonder that Morpheus has stepped in to fill the vacuum...
...This is not to say that the genie is out of the bottle and online music services must forever be free or die. I'd say most of Morpheus' users are honest enough that they wouldn't mind if a dollar was deducted from their bank account every time they downloaded an MP3 (it would be worth it to guarantee a complete, error free download every time). But there's the rub: nobody appears to be even thinking of offering what we might call Morpheus Plus. The business models of Napster and MusicNet call for tunes to come in their...