Penn State and Napster Team up to Make Legal Tunes Available to Students

[markses]

From the "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" department:

http://live.psu.edu/story/4586

Anaheim, Calif. – Penn State University announced today it is going to revolutionize the music world with a ground-breaking agreement with the online music service Napster, a division of Roxio (Nasdaq: ROXI).

Speaking in California at the annual EDUCAUSE meeting of thousands of information technology administrators from universities around the country, Penn State President Graham B. Spanier said the University has signed an agreement with Napster to launch a program in which Penn State will make Napster’s Premium Service available at no cost to its students.

Napster will offer those students unlimited streaming and tethered downloads from a digital library of more than 500,000 songs, as well as 40 radio stations, access to six decades of Billboard chart data, an online magazine and community features. Students also can purchase permanent downloads that can be burned to CDs or transferred to portable devices for 99 cents each.

“This will be the first step in a new, legal approach designed to meet student interest in getting extensive digital access to music,” Spanier said. “We have already set up student focus groups at Penn State who have been testing the Napster service. We will essentially deploy thousands of testers in the spring semester to use this program and give us feedback before we roll it out for even wider student use in the fall of 2004.”

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Lots more...