Apple's rival companies, Napster and F.Y.E., are in the process of making a "Portable Music Rental Service", Napster plans o turn up the heat on Apple with a $30 million advertising campaign debuting during Sunday's Super Bowl to promote a relaunch of its portable subscription service, dubbed Napster To Go.

How music fans answer that question in coming months will help determine the viability of a new slate of online music services that offer to fill portable music players with an unlimited number of songs for a monthly fee.

How they market these devices will be a crucial part to there survival, or downfall, they need to be able to persuade consumers that are accustomed to buying CDs, or digital tracks purchased via the internet to switch to paying a monthly fee and acquiring an unlimited amount of songs for there rental time period. After there rental period is up, the device automatically dumps all of the songs on the hard drive and the ones on there computer to be sure that the songs are not used anymore.

The problem is that in the current state of the market, vendors at best have been offering technical equivalents of the iPod, and the iPod itself has transcended from a consumer electronics item to cultural icon.

The only companies providing this service is Napster and F.Y.E. who's monthly subscriptions are both priced at $14.95... Click here to read the full story