Review of Pay Napster 382
An Anonymous Coward writes: "A beta tester for the recently released subscription version of Napster has anonymously posted his impressions of the new service. He finds it remarkably similar to the old one, both good '... browsing through a real person's music collection, sending them messages and recommending them new music' and bad '... broken tracks, cancelled transfers and a complete inability to stream or preview tracks.' The service allows 50 tracks a month, but there was little decent content to fill those slots. Messages to other beta testers found mixed reactions among fellow users. Still, the writer holds out some optimism for Napster's chances."
Napster, napster, napster... (Score:4, Interesting)
Coincidence? I think not.
I'll still continue to download various stuffs, and go out and purchase cds when I find stuff I like. Everyone, including the recording industry, would be a lot happier if they realized what a powerful marketing tool these p2p file sharing dealies are.
This is the end... (Score:3, Interesting)
Who in their right mind is going to pay for it to begin with, with so [cnet.com] many [cnet.com] other [cnet.com] File Sharing apps on the Free market?
RIAA loves this. (Score:5, Interesting)
The spin will be, that the failure of Napster is due to digital music not being accepted by the public in this form, as its only use is to pirate music.
Will this be cracked? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is the option, however, to cancel a download mid stream without depleting your download count.
Wasn't there something called "leech zmodem" back in the BBS days? This version of zmodem would abort the download at the very last byte, so as to fool the BBS's upload/download ratio tracking.
I bet something like this will make the rounds when Pay Napster comes online.
Something to think about (Score:2, Interesting)
Free web content is only free if your time is worth nothing.
Translation: Sure, you can go get all the free bits you want, but the service here is:
1. Quality
2. Access to what you want, when you want
If those can be provided, then perhaps it is worth a small subscription price. There is an incentive (keeping your subscription current) for Napster to provide value. There is no incentive for some random URL to provide value, because without a purchase there is no value by definition.
However, this only holds true if the value difference remains. If Napster starts providing a substandard service, then it won't be worth the money to subscribe.
But I do think they deserve a chance, espeically if they will be offering smaller or new artists an opportunity to distribute their music as well.
Re:What's the point (Score:3, Interesting)
Napster sucks. It was a great (but simple) idea that was never implemented well until the clones.
Shawn's shoes? (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean sell your tech to your VC uncle and get subsiquently shafted by him for a few hundred thousand dolars on your million (billion?) dolar idea? Or prance around like an idiot frat boy on MTV, totaly blowing your chance to get the MTV generation to care about copyright law?
Or were you under some sort of impression that Sean Fanning has or ever had any kind of control over napster?
Cancel option (Score:3, Interesting)
I can clearly see people killing the download on the last few bytes by clamping down the bandwidth and cutting off the few last bytes in order to save their slots...
Re:Up to 50 tracks (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:RIAA loves this. (Score:5, Interesting)
What are the biggest problems with digital music right now?
* hard to find a given song/artist/CD
* quality is uneven
* takes time/effort to rip your own CDs
* tranfers abort, and lots of incomplete songs around
* new, better formats, or bigger drive measn that you might want something other than a 128k MP3 in the future
So what's the solution? To make a crippled pay-per-play system with all of the same shortcomings, except now you have to shell out good money for incomplete downloads?
If the music companies would provide answers to those problems, they could easily be making ten times what they get today within a decade. Every music consumer in the world pays $14.95 a month for unlimited access to complete archives of the companies, in whatever format is most convenient, digitized straight from the original recording, and with always-on dedicated servers for providing the files.
And like TiVo, you've got central servers to compare listening tastes, providing you with constantly updated recommendations based on what you've already listened to.
No more MP3 files with incorrect ID tags, no more ripping and re-ripping, no more aborted downloads. Plus dead-on accurate recommendations for bands you love but never would have known about!
people will pay for convenience and service in music like everything else. This is a market just waiting for the music industry idiots to get off their butts and sell to it. if Napster did this it would take a few years to get going, but eventually become hugely profitable.
How financially limited did cable TV look 30 years ago? Yeah, lots of folks just went over to a friends house to watch HBO rather than pay for it themselves. But over time it just became easier for everyone to pay their 35 bucks a month and get cable into their own home. Now people are starting to pay another $9.95 a month for TiVo service and consider it a bargain.
there's a price point where it's just "too cheap NOT to buy", and the music industry is nowhere near it yet.
for something free, without software (Score:2, Interesting)
its not in english, but they have some very cool stuff!
Would have paid for the old Napster (Score:3, Interesting)
Put if it was pay only, no one would use it, and if nobody uses it, there's no files, etc etc.
Emusic vs Napster (Score:2, Interesting)
Really, I wonder how this saga is going to turn out. I'm more than happy to pay for content, like I do when I buy books, CDs, DVDs and my Emusic subscription. But I like to feel like I have some ownership over the media and can watch/listen when I want, how I want. That seems fair to me. Not being able to, say, copy music files to my Laptop or an mp3 player is like having a book that won't open when I take it on a plane!
Leech Zmodem (Score:3, Interesting)
What are the odds? (Score:1, Interesting)
I use:
Kazaa - Fast Multisourced Downloads with amazing search refinement.
Direct Connect - The must be around a PetaByte by now. Good search options, DivX heaven.
AudioGalaxy - Just Select your Track, Select your bitrate, Queue them up and leave it running.
There are probably more and I'm sure you're all familiar with them.
So who in their right mind is ever going to pay for 50 downloads when:
1. The track probably is'nt there.
2. Prorietry file format ?!?!?!
3. Does'nt stream or preview so bad rips really suck.
4. I like to look for Oggs or Flacs.
5. It costs money.
6. Its not free.
7. Its not illegal. (read: Does'nt make you feel naughty)
8. Its legal.
The new Napster will fail.