No Rock And Roll Fun

DOWNLOAD DEEPER AND DOWN: Another attempt to make people pay for online music (other than irritating ringtones) is being attempted, this time by Freeserve and Peter Gabriel's OD2 service (no, we haven't, either) making music from the likes of Dido, Madonna, and other laundry list type acts. The service is going to cost a fairly reasonable sounding £5 a month, but its not clear if that lets you keep the music you harvest for that, or if it goes poof at the end of the month.
Talking of going poof, the long and frankly embarrassing death of Napster finally seems to be drawing to its conclusion, with Shaun Fanning stepping down from the company this week - presumably he suddenly realised just how pointless Napster had become since it stopped being the home of free cool music and announced its intention to dump the illegal content and go all subscription and legitimate. They might have just had a shot if they'd signed up the major labels and relaunched within a couple of weeks, but as the weeks went on and nothing happened, the Napster brand started to sound less like a hi-tech marque and more and more like the audio SodaStream. Switch it off now, children. The labels beat you.