There are rental cars, furniture, tools, but not MP3 players. What is the logic in being able to rent MP3's from Napster, but being forced to buy a player to put them on? Maybe a few individuals rent their players out, but if national chains would do so it should catch on. Not everyone can afford the $300+ pricetag on most of them, and sometimes portable music is only necessary for the once or twice a year airplane ride, which wouldn't be worth spending so much money to get so little use.-- StorDuff, Jul 04 2005 Froogle Search: MP3 Player http://froogle.goog..._s&tab=wf&scoring=pStarting at $17.95 [contracts, Jul 04 2005] My USB disk cost me £40 (about $80, a couple of years ago) and will play mp3s. It costs about half that now. Only stores 128mb or about 2 albums though. However, interesting idea.-- david_scothern, Jul 04 2005 There isn't a $300+ pricetag on most of them, though. Only on the most egregiously overpriced trendy ones. There is a whole host of low-price, high-capacity models on the market.
Adding to this is the problem of stocking the MP3 player. If this would just be a question of "hey, let me get an iPod for the next six hours - - it's going to be a long flight" then how long would it take you to select, procure, and populate the machine with music?-- contracts, Jul 04 2005 I'm sure there is a market for that somewhere, perhaps if with the rental fee you got a better and better mp3 player as the technology got better. +-- sartep, Jul 05 2005 The $300 tag on the unit probably does not warrant a rental outright, BUT you have made a avery god point.
Mobile phone contracts often include the phone for free and get the 'rental' from call value.
Now how about a 'free' MP3 player that can receive the 'latest Sony™ and Warner™ tunes' -- at a cost per subscription that eventually covers the player.
Someone at HB-Central needs to get an MBA and push these ideas in the 'meatspace' (real world).-- not_only_but_also, Jul 05 2005 random, halfbakery