The Nine Lives of Napster 309
lisa langsdorf writes "There's an interesting article on BusinessWeek.com today about Napster's race to gain greater market share in the music download business. According to a recent study, Apple has 75% of the pay for music download market, but Napster could soon gain more market share due to a new upcoming market push. BusinessWeek says: 'Napster could start to increase market share in the more profitable business of selling monthly subscriptions, where customers can listen to -- but not own -- as many songs as they want each month for $9.95. While Napster is far behind RealNetworks' Rhapsody service, AOL's MusicNet, and others, it's taking the lead again in the old Napster's stomping ground: college campuses.'"
Beam Back (Score:5, Informative)
Napster is dead (Score:3, Informative)
There is nothing Napster-like about 2.0, NOTHING. I think someone should sue them for false advertising, because Napster is supposed to be synonymous with free.
Re:I will not buy DRM (Score:2, Informative)
Prepaid Napster Cards (Score:2, Informative)
Way to rip of PA (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Informative)
Not agreeing or disagreeing with you here, just pointing out that with Napster, if you pay the $9.95 per month you actually aren't given access to the entire catalogue. Many songs appear to be marked as "purchase only".
Food for thought...
Re:Is Napster Secure? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.highcriteria.com/ [highcriteria.com]
I... um... Some guy I know uses it to record directly to MP3 files from Rhapsody. The sound quality is almost indistinguishable from the original when recording at 320kbps, but still noticably a bit lower than a CD rip.
Re:Why Should I bother? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Easy access (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I will not buy DRM (Score:2, Informative)
Subscription vs. Buying Online (Score:2, Informative)
The primary justification for buying my Karma 20 MP3/OGG player was books-on-CD from the library. I missed reading, and now I can "read" a book while driving on the boring interstate or doing menial labor (not programming or engineering). In fact, I'm ripping and encoding the last CD from Jon Krakaur's Under The Banner Of Heaven as I type this. Listen once, and I'm done, which does make sense for a monthly rental. I'd gladly skip the trip to the library and rent a single use MP3 for a buck or two. Saving me the time to shuffle CDs would be worth it.
Of course, all the DRM and DMCA crap is far too much hassle to be worth using. The artists need to be compensated, but making it almost impossible to enjoy their work is not the solution.
I like the idea of putting the control back in the hands of the artists, regardless of whether it's a book-on-CD or music. Pay to download works. I have used PayPal to quickly send a few bucks to various humor websites if I liked the content. Ubergeek [ubergeek.tv] is a great example. I also donated $20 to a Multiple Sclerosis charity website [vixpix.org] in the UK because I liked the novel breast bearing approach that was used to solicit donations.
A few dollars for a download, paid directly to the artist is a lot better than the raping they get from the RIAA.