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.'"
Is Napster Secure? (Score:5, Interesting)
Like Most, I would prefer to own (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Like most people, I buy around 4 - 5 CD's a year. This totals about 50 - 60 bucks. For me to pay $10 per month, I would have to own the music to justify the $120 per year cost.
I believe that most people, much like myself, would like to own their music. I want to put it on any device I want. I want as many copies as I need. And, I want it available anytime, anywhere. When these companies figure that out, then they will start making money from me. Until then, I will continue to buy the 4-5 cds I deem worthy.
I will not buy DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
Brand name (Score:5, Interesting)
"New Napster" = Roxio (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm glad someone has finally pointed this out. The "new napster" is actually run by Roxio, the folks that make EasyCD Creator for Windows and Toast for Mac.
Now if only the Nero guys would show us what a real music store could look like....!!
As S Jobs says... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm now over 250 song purchased from the itunes music store and still think its the closest thing to digital music nirvana there is.
Very liberal DRM (that still protects the artist), cheap, Incredbile round tripping between itunes software and the ipod and the list goes on...
Scott "how's buymusic.com doing now?" Blum can kiss my itunes using behind. It still cracks me up when i think of the shameful buymusic.com launch and the quotes that were attributed to him....
Re:Like Most, I would prefer to own (Score:3, Interesting)
far too much opinion here (Score:4, Interesting)
Hell, I had an inch-thick binder full of 9-point type with just a few day' worth of 'classic' napster download logs "back-in-the-day" at a teensie campus... the lead is a long way off.
Re:Why Should I bother? (Score:3, Interesting)
ITMS has free streaming music. (Score:5, Interesting)
-A
A little misleading.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Good luck Napster on that one because you are going to need after losing $15 million last year. Here's to hoping that you find many more suckers in the pay stream market.
Re:As S Jobs says... (Score:2, Interesting)
Stupid marketing speak (Score:5, Interesting)
"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."
In other words, Apple is beating the crap out of Napster right now, but Napster might do better. They might do better because there are only three options, do better, do worse, or stay the same...
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Interesting)
What does on-demand get you, really? It depends on your listening habits. Let's say you are starting from a blank slate, and have no music.
After three years of subscribing to Napster, you are still no better off than you were when you first started. You have paid out $360.
If you had spent this money with Apple, you'd have 360 songs on your hard drive, that would be in a lossy format, but otherwise yours to do with as you please.
If you had spent this money on CDs, you'd have around 25 albums, or approximately 300 songs. These songs would be completely unrestricted in what you could do with them, be in a non-lossy format, and able to be stored in a reasonably secure manner.
With the case of Napster, you end up with nothing, and they could go out of business at any time. However, you get to hear a wide variety of songs.
With the case of Apple, you end up with a lower-quality format than CDs, but you get the files to keep. You start out with a small selection of songs, but it widens each time you spend money. If your hard drive crashes, you've lost them all, unless you back up. If you back them up to CD, you should be aware that CDRs have a dramatically lower life than silver CDs.
With the case of CDs, you keep a high-quality copy of the songs that belong to you, they last much longer than CDRs, and are less susceptible to scratches/sulight/etc. However, you have to go outdoors to buy them, or wait for them to be delivered. There is the same problem as Apple, in that you start of with a limited selection of songs, but this constantly grows.
So basically, if you only listen to a few albums at a time, and you want to own your music collection, then Napster is right out. Apple is cheaper, but CDs have significant benefits. Apple is more suited to the impulse buy than CDs (when you are sitting in front of your computer, of course).
But you need to look at the wider picture. The people who want a constantly changing selection of songs, or to listen to stuff that was released just the other day, already have something to satisfy those urges - radio. Given the combination of radio and Apple/CDs, it's very difficult to see what value Napster is offering.
I must be missing something (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, I'm good so far. As of this point in history, the RIAA is making $0 additional dollars out of Internet downloads. Other services are trying out, like MP3.com and emusic.com and so on, but that's not helping the RIAA. Not that I'm terribly concerned about them myself, but I'm sure they are concerned about themselves.
So then this happens:
As we all know, subscriber services have pretty much crashed and burned. And this is the part I don't get:
Why do those who prefer subscriber services keep trying to tell everybody else how great it is? Since Rhapsody and Real Network's service came out, it's been "the consumer will realize how great our service is, and they will come to us with great shedding of tears of joy, and we will ease their music needs with our streaming servers!"
Except that people aren't rushing to subscriber services. Most of these services have just not been doing well.
Moving on in history:
So let's get back to Napster 2.0.
So that's where we are. I know Micorosft likes Napster, and wants them to do well to peddle WMA to the world, and then there's the whole college thing.
And once those college students leave the dorms? Will they say "Hey, let's pay $10 a month to Napster to keep listening to music!", or will they say either:
A. I haven't had to pay for music in years, and now I can't listen to my old stuff. Streaming music stuff - I'll just download it off [insert P2P service here].
Or:
B. Well, guess I'll have to buy the song. May as well use the iTunes store - it works with my iPod.
Napster doesn't really have a "value added" reason to use them over iTunes. Sure, there are WMA devices out there, and I'd be surprised if the average man on the street can name you 1. No, not geeks - I'm sure I'll get calls of the "Archon Mega Zord Power MP3 player!" - average man on the street. Ask them what MP3 player works with Napster, and you'll either get blank looks, or "iPod", and then you'll scream and say "those only work with the iTunes store, you nitwit!"
And then they'll say "Oh. Well, I guess I'll go there instead."
Apple's got it all d
Re:Just curious (Score:1, Interesting)
Then let me be the first to say: To hell with iTunes
That's right. I said it. To the stinking sulfur pits of hell with iTunes. Let's look at this from a consumer standpoint.
Option 1: CDs and player. CD's are (finally) dropping in price. They support artists (at least as much as iTunes). A player is 30 bucks. I can play it ANYWHERE as often as I like, and if the store that sold it goes out of business, no big deal. No DRM. No internet connection required.
Option 2: iTunes. I pay almost the same amount of money for a disc worth of tunes and the quality blows ass (sorry, but 128K AAC sounds like crap, same as MP3). I can only listen to it on approved devices which cost 10x as much as CD hardware. Sure the CD player can skip, but that can be mitigated with a giant cushion of CASH that you don't have to spend. I can only listen to it on computers that I have "registered" due to the DRM applied to the content. If Apple should fold, what happens to my tunes? Are they still mine?
So you can see that with iTunes, you pay the same amount of money for a music product that sounds worse, restricts use, and offers no benefit to the artist above a CD. Now tell me again why I am supposed to care?
Re:Sorry... (Score:4, Interesting)
I forsee that I'll be about as interested in owning music as I am in owning an encyclopedia. Welcome to the on demand world.
False comparison, not insightful. I don't read the encyclopedia while driving to work in the morning. I don't read the encyclopedia while jogging or riding a bike. I don't read the encyclopedia for hours on end just for simple entertainment. I don't go to concerts to watch a live encyclopedia performance.
And like a LOT of other people, I would not pay for a subscription to an encyclopedia, either.
It's the DRM, stupid. (Score:2, Interesting)
They are winning because of the iPod, the slickest portable digital audio player in the game.
It's the hardware.
If I could go to Best Buy and browse from a selection of six to eight portable digital audio players that worked with Napster's DRM, and these products were reasonably affordable and well designed, Napster's bottom line would be much better off. Much better off if Napster got a kickback off every one sold, that is.
People do not like having audio files they can only play on their PC, or (in the case of Apple) having to purchase an absurdly expensive player. Apple could blow the lid off the maket if the mini iPod had been $149 with 128 megs of RAM and memory card slots instead of getting stuck in MUST-HAVE-INTERNAL HARD DRIVE tunnel vision.
Jobs: How about this- I already buying memory cards for various electronics in my home. How about if I can use them in my new iPod as well? Must everything be proprietary? And must my audio player look as though it must be held by a blonde 17 year old girl rollerblading down the boardwalk in hotpants whilst sipping a double shot swiss water process half-calf soy milk mochaccino? Cool is only worth so much more, you know. If Napster had a line of solid players and relaxed their DRM restrictions a little they could knock iTunes out of the box.
Re:Sorry... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not bitter that napster was shut down... (Score:2, Interesting)
Napster was good for just grabbing a random song here and there but sucked ass for getting a whole album. Each song would be encoded by a different person at different quality levels and sound levels. I'm not bitter that napster was taken away - it just meant that something better would be here that much sooner.
First it was kazaa, which had the same problem as napster in terms of downloading a whole album, but you could also get movies and software from it. It also had multi-source downloads, so everything was sure to be on your computer in the blink of an eye (supposing you had broadband of course). That was really cool.
Then along came edonkey and bittorrent. You can get anything you could ever imagine from these two programs, including
The original napster was a good first step, in fact I would say it was revolutionary because of the programs it inspired, but compared to what we have today, it doesnt hold a candle. I tried out the "new" napster and think it is well done, in fact I actually like it better than iTMS, but anything that restricts my use of media is not something I'm going to pay for.
Try a Dictionary (Score:3, Interesting)
You need to think about what a "subscription" means. Think different! Just because you pay up-front (instead of amortizing the cost over a periodic interval of payments) doesn't change its nature. If I paid a sum of money up-front for a Rhapsody subscription, and my license term was for the length of time the software player remained on a specific PC, would I be buying a "subscription" or a "license"?
Subscription: an arrangement for providing, receiving, or making use of something of a continuing or periodic nature on a prepayment plan.
Reselling CDs might be a pain for you, but consider someone else who might have "purchased" several thousand dollars of iTMS product. Afert several years she wants to sell the iPod with attached product to someone else. If she had CDs she could enjoy right of resale and obtain a fair market value. Because she does not own the iTMS products, but only owns a non-transferrable license, she can resell the iPod but cannot, legally, assign any value to the contents of that iPod with respect to the iTMS product.
Finally, you use rude words a lot. And a rather pathetic ad hominem insinuation about illegal narcotics, framed within a class-specific drug format denigration. Are you always this angry?
Re:Sorry... (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, the AIFF audio in a CD is a lossy format. You can't sample music at any bitrate and expect to retain all of the information. A 44kHz 16 bit sampled song (the format used by CD audio)only retains the frequencies below 22kHz, due to Nyquist sampling issues. You also get some aliasing of the music which produces artifacts.
Since Apple gets the majority of its song directly from studio masters you are going to tend to get quality which is about as good as that on a CD. This is because even though the AAC files are considerably compressed they are compressed in such a way that they only "lose" the portions of the audio which you are not likely to hear in the first place. CD audio samples the music mechanically and pays no attention to how the result sounds. AAC encoding is very good at retaining the original sound of the master. Yes you might hear some artifacts but you would also hear artifacts if you compared CD audio to the original masters.
I look at buying songs through iTunes this way: I'm going to want to encode the song to put on my iPod anyways so why go through the bother of encoding it myself? If I buy a CD it costs more and I'm encoding from one lossy medium (CD audio) to another (AAC). Not only that but I also have to take the time to go to the store, buy the CD, and put it in my computer to rip it. If I buy through the iTunes Music store all this is done for me, at less cost, and directly from studio masters. I've also been getting free songs through Pepsi and exclusive tracks through Apple. It seems like a good deal to me.
iTunes is the wrong comparison for subscription (Score:4, Interesting)
In those terms it doesn't seem quite as unreasonable.
I used to be a Napster subscriber, but since I bought an iPod I cancelled (can't use the
Re:I still don't get the streaming revenue model (Score:2, Interesting)
Think about it - as a streaming service increases its number of users, the server and bandwidth requirements (and thus cost) are going to increase in a very linear fashion. In contrast, for Apple, the increase may be linear, but the slope's going to be MUCH more shallow.
To detail my reasoning:
Apple's just got to have the capacity to stream a few previews and support a few downloads for a given user. If the person likes the song, they buy it and play the local copy, rather than streaming it again. If an average user sets a reasonable monthly allowance, Apple only has to send them less than 50 songs a month, and maybe 100 30 second previews.
Now think about the capacity required for a service that has to be sending out data whenever a user wants to listen to a song. The average user will probably need several hundred songs sent to them a month. Much higher bandwidth and server requirements.
Meanwhile, the person streaming the music has sent his service less than what Apple's gotten out of many of its purchasers. So, basically, i think the streaming services are starting out with two strikes against them.
JT
Lease Theory (Score:3, Interesting)
If you dont own it, boycott it.
These people are really thick (Score:3, Interesting)
There has been a order of magnitude change in the price that people are willing to pay for pre-recorded music. This change happened in 1997-2000 when the combination of MP3, CD rippers, Napster, and $100 CD burners came into public consciousness at the same time.
In other words, people aren't going to pay $18 for a CD or $1 for a song. They will pay $1.80 for a CD and 18 cents for a song.
This is the new public perception of what music is worth.
The transformation in music distribution due to a technology shift doesn't seem to have penetrated the thick skulls of the people who run the music industry.
It happened. It's a new reality. It's like the stock market crash. Yahoo! is never going to be $180 a share again. CDs are not going to bought in huge numbers at $18 each anymore.
Learn to deal with it. And stop all these insane lawsuits before somebody gets hurt. They all have six figure incomes - they're supposed to be smart. Sheezh!
Re:I still don't get the streaming revenue model (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:/. gave away the secret! (Score:3, Interesting)