Following in the footsteps of Penn State University, the University of Rochester is set to implement a deal to offer free music downloads to its students with the file-sharing company Napster starting later this semester.
At present, only Penn State and Rochester have signed up to provide this service to students on a campuswide basis. Rochester will be the first private university to do so.
Currently, the University of Pennsylvania has no immediate plans to participate in such a program.
Penn State began offering its on-campus students free membership in Napster's premium program last month. Administrators have said that it is an effort to curb illegal music downloading among students, and the program has seen great success in its first few weeks.
Now the 3,700 students who reside on Rochester's two main campuses will soon have access to the company's premium package, which includes a subscription to an online magazine, access to 500,000 audio tracks, interactive radio stations and several other features, Provost Charles Phelps said in a recent press release.
In addition, Napster and the Eastman School of Music at Rochester will be "developing ways in which Napster can begin to provide original content from Eastman students and faculty to service members across the entire Napster network," Phelps added.
As with Penn State, the service will be free to Rochester students.
"Initially, the monthly fees [for Napster Premium Service] will be funded by the university. This will be the case through the spring of 2005," said Robert Kraus, the associate vice president for public relations at Rochester.
"At that point, the service will be evaluated, and we will nail down the permanent financial arrangement."
Students who wish to download songs they can burn onto a CD will have to purchase those tracks at an additional cost.
Rochester expects that the program will end up being successful.
"Our one guide to this is what's happening at Penn State," Kraus said.
Still, he added that Rochester is "engaging in an experiment."
"It's hard to tell what our model will be in the long term."
In the press release, Larry Linietsky, Napster's senior vice president of business development, said that he looks forward to the deal with Rochester "as well as [deals with] other institutions down the road."
"Many schools have since sought to institute similar programs with us," Linietsky added.
