"Premium"

[Eirikur Hallgrimsson]

I do wonder if the whole world of consumer web-services is doomed.

Perhaps the only pay services to survive will be those who can get paid
by ISP (or Cellco) level fee aggregation.

I grumble about this because my favorite streaming music source has outgrown 
its hobby status and is now soliciting payment via PayPal and Amazon 
donations, etc.  A year and some ago, I told them to get cracking on a means 
to pay them.  It's one of those frustrating things where the use of open 
protocols and data formats means that you can't just charge people a 
reasonable fee.    Not that you could really do this with infinite free 
competition hosted by Shoutcast and Live365.  Funny, being noncommercial has 
let them use Live365 as a fan-out.  I wonder if that's why they are fooling 
around with Real's technology at this point.  It seems like belated 
brain-damage to go with the inferior proprietary solution.

Grumble.

Eirikur