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.'"
Does anyone know (Score:5, Insightful)
Cool... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just curious (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, I know you all are stiff for Apple, so anything they do just has to be covered as innovative and cool. But Napster is not napster anymore, the name was merely bought.
Big fricking deal.
I just dont care that the new Napster is going to start a big marketing push. That's what businesses do, duh.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
And when you... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dont do DRM.
Re:Just curious (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Beam Back (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is Napster Secure? (Score:4, Insightful)
College Endorsement (Score:4, Insightful)
Penn State University and the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music intend to offer free Napster subscriptions to thousands of students in coming months. These are just pilot programs, and Roxio granted big discounts that will keep profits negligible at best, say insiders. But the hope is that the students will become paying customers for years to come. "Smart," says Kenswill.
A college endorsing and paying for a private entertainment service of this sort? This is a school of music, but billing Napster as academic resource seems a little questionable. Unless I miss my guess, Napster's unlikely to have deals with the world's great bastions of classical music performance. Another example of an academic institution adopting a policy of private endorsement.
Why Should I bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should I even bother with any of these pay for download schemes? Lets be serious here.
They dont provide any CONSUMER Benifit over the "shady" p2p services.
They give me no incentive to switch. The quality of the files are oft worse then what i can get illegally. You pay for something, and dont get anything tangible in return. The selection is severly limited. And there are file restrictions.
There is a very easy way to fix this whole problem. Put up a "donate" button on artist's websites so I can fling them a few bucks.
Unfortunatly, due to politics, this is mindboggingly complex. Im getting really tired of putting up with half-assed efforts that are simply a mediocre nod to the population.
Remember, we are fighting with people who think that free, instant, worldwide access to much of the art created in the past 100 years is a BAD THING.
ugh. just ugh.
Re:Does anyone know (Score:5, Insightful)
That is an excellent point and might I add another. It seems the public wants, no, demands portability with their music. Are you supposed to only listen to Napster's offerings on your computer or do they have some DMX/Napster thing-a-majig coming? And if so we are back to "How do we pay the artist?".
just my thoughts....
Re:Sorry... (Score:4, Insightful)
Are people really going to accept ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Half the fun of discovering/enjoying new music is turning your friends on to it. For me anyway ...
I understand the need for these distribution companies to cling to the idea of control and taxing our enjoyment habits, but they need to dig deeper when they think about a possible business model that will work for the artists, themselves, and most importantly the consumer ...
Why... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am. I'd rather pay $9.95 a month and have access to the label's entire catalog for streaming for as long as I want to pay $9.95 a month, than pay a dollar per song.
It breaks down to the price of about 10 "bought" songs per month, or 120 "bought" songs per year. Compared to my MP3 library of 3000+ songs, I'd have to subscribe for well over 20 years before it'd be cheaper for me to have just bought all that music outright.
Subscribe to this newsletter, biatch! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it's more profitable -- you're tied to the service by an umbilical cord, and as soon as you stop paying, you lose all access to the music, no matter how much you've paid up to that point!
There's a reason Americans are so big on the home buying thing: they don't want to pay rent for the rest of their lives.
Let's do some math: $10/month = $120/year = $1200/decade. So if after paying my 1200 bucks, I decide to stop subscribing -- or Napster goes out of business, then I have, let's do some more math: squat! No music for my money.
And of course, my subscription won't work at work -- my employer won't want the bandwidth cost of my streaming --, and it won't work on my portable, because it'll all be DRM'd streams.
If I want to listen without owning, there's this thing called radio. Since that's almost wholly dominated by Clear Channel Homogeneity, I re-phrase: Internet radio.
But no way will I subscribe to ephemeral music encumbered by Digital Restrictions Management.
"old stomping grounds"? most of the kids moved on! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait Wait Wait... (Score:1, Insightful)
Napster wants to charge X amount of dollars a month for them to stream music to me? "Music on Demand"? But, I don't own the music... meaning I can't put it on my discman, my iPod, or my home stereo?
I don't get how it could be successful...
Predictions, Pundits, and Prognosticators (Score:4, Insightful)
"While praising Apple's service, analysts caution that its success won't necessarily transfer completely to the Windows environment." - John Borland, c|net news, 7/28/03
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
-B
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I'm sorry, but you don't own your music unless you made it. What you do own is a copy of the music and a license to listen to it under certain conditions specified by the copyright owner. This includes all that vinyl (you do know what "vinyl" is, right?) and your CD collection as well.
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't read the article, nor do I have any plans on checking out the service. Having said that, this is a pretty lame analogy for most of us. I can't recall the last time I wanted to jam out with a good article on the Vietnam War while cruising up highway 280 to san francisco. But, when I feel like listening to Front 242 (hello 90's music) and putting the transmission in to Sport mode, thank god I have my iPod and a non-RF interface. And when was the last time you wanted to share a good piece of reference material at a party?
Let's face it, a lot of things *may* work on demand (movies seem to be what most people think of), but music is something that people like to share in a portable fashion: in the car, at a party, on the boat, wherever you spend your time.
Napster on campus (Score:2, Insightful)
I still don't get the streaming revenue model (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there some advantage to picking my own songs (ie I'm doing the DJ work here) versus logging into an all-Blues or all-Jazz or all-whatever streaming audio feed and forgetting about music 'till I shut down?
Or does Napster offer an option to do that grunt work for you (which makes them exactly, and I mean exactly, the same as a free streaming radio station)?
Sorry, I just don't get it. My $120 still buys 6 to 12 CDs a year (depending on whether they're new releases or older albums) and I can have my choice of internet radio stations, many of whom broadcast at 128 kbps.
At least with the iTMS you can keep the songs; although I still bristle at paying anything for a lossy compressed version I'm not naeive enough to think that it's not good enough for many people.
But streaming music is free, free, free right now. What am I missing here?
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wonderful point. [everquest.com] It's very clear [darkageofcamelot.com] that nobody is going to want [asheronscall.com] to pay for any service over the internet [thesimsonline.com].
Napster is dead. No, really. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
I bet you are also likely to pay a monthly subscription to access an encyclopedia aren't you? How are the two related? It boggles my mind to think that you said I don't want to own music just like I don't want to own an encyclopedia.
I mean sure, when cd's first came out, everyone had an encyclopedia on a disc that seemed to come with a cd drive and it was cool but did you ever really use it? No because unless you are in school doing research you don't need to use one. Now we have the great wikipedia which is free so I doubt I'd be spending any money (aside from a donation to them) on an encyclopedia.
I have a bunch of cds... I ripped them all to mp3. Why would I pay someone money to listen to those or similar songs? In fact I haven't bought a cd for about 3 years now. ($10/month * 12 months = $120 * 3 = $360) So in my situation I would have wasted about $360 in the past three years. Now say I decided I really like John Mayer's new album and I want to buy it. I go to iTunes and spend $10 and I can now listen to that album whenever and wherever I want. I don't have to continue to pay someone to listen to it.
So if you pay more than $10/month on cd's and expect to continue to do so for the rest of your life and you don't think napster is going to collapse I'd say it's a deal. However, if you are like me and probably paid a few hundred dollars on a bunch of cd's over the years but only force buying a new cd every year or so then it's really not worth it. On demand works for some things, not for others. I definately don't think it works for music.
(BTW, I haven't bought a cd in about 3 years because I am boycotting RIAA. I probably won't buy anything off iTunes either but there are a few songs that I've been considering. I really wish more authors would put out their own songs)
College Campuses (Score:3, Insightful)
i'm surprised people haven't realized that college students don't have money. the reason why napster was so popular with college students was because of their broadband connection and because it was free. free (and illegal) methods spread like wildfire on campuses and so long as there's a cheaper or free alternative, i highly doubt napster will become as popular on campuses as it has in the past if at all.
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or when you decide that you've been spending way too much money on a service you don't really use any more and decide to cancel your subscription you are back to 0 songs. whoops, should have bought the cd or bought them from iTunes huh? At least then you'd still have music to listen to.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't own that iTMS product (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't own that music. What you get from iTMS is a long license to play that music on a narrow range of hardware device. You are buying a subscription, only instead of a monthly fee you pay a one-off license fee.
Don't believe me? Try reselling what you have "bought".
To purgatory with iTunes, maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
Burn your Apple tunes to a CD, and you're in business.
What's not to like? Sure, some will scoff that the quality is better on a CD, but I'd much rather get a little noise in tunes I want than crystal-clear reproduction of all the rubbish it took to pad out an EP into an album.
Easy access (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't you know you get more legitimacy as a fan boy if you claim that the bands early albums as their best? Come on now, get with the program here.
Re:Just curious (Score:5, Insightful)
This is your opinion and you're entitled to it, but there are millions of people who either disagree with you or find the quality difference to be negligible.
I can only listen to it on approved devices which cost 10x as much as CD hardware.
Or you can burn a CD and listen to it on CD hardware.
I can only listen to it on computers that I have "registered" due to the DRM applied to the content.
You're right. And?
Now tell me again why I am supposed to care?
It's a new delivery mechanism that supports modern technology, and it's neatly packaged inside a decent music player. It has advantages and disadvantages. So do CDs. I don't give a rat's ass if you use the iTunes Music Store or not, but when you talk about it with such force ("to hell with iTunes"), it just makes you sound crotchety and old-fashioned.
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
B/c you can cherrypick the 360 tracks individually rather than all the album filler. When comparing songs you would actually rate highly and listen to repeatedly, the fairer comparison is probably 360 Apple songs vs. 40-100 CD songs.
Re:Sorry... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you buy an album, you own it. Period. You can do whatever the fuck you want with it. Period. It is yours.
Copyright law introduces some restrictions on what you're allowed to do with the intangible content on it; the aim, of course, is to guarantee the producer a limited monopoly on the ability to produce said album.
Let me repeat that. You do not license CDs. You own them.
I could take a photo of me putting my wang between a pair of Cindi Lauper CDs and that wouldn't violate your hypothetical license.