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Music Media

Napster Signs Indie Deal 119

Posted by Hemos from the good-deal dept.
A reader:"The BBC News site has a story about Napster signing a deal with 150 record companies to distrube their music over the net." Interesting to note this piece though that the usage has totally dropped off the face of the earth.
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Napster Signs Indie Deal More

Napster Signs Indie Deal

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  • P2P distribution will never work (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There is no way that a p2p network can possibly be used to charge for material. There are several reasons for this:
    1. Napster wasn't the first to distribute (illegal) mp3z over the internet. Before napster there were plenty of warez sites where mp3z could easily be found and downloaded. Nothings changed. Just because i've stopped using napster doesn't mean i've stopped downloading mp3z. In fact I don't miss napster at all, what, with the poor quality mp3z and the transfer errors.
    2. Why pay when I can get it for free? I might want to pay to support the artists, but I don't think a napster type distribution method would support this. If you're only paying a few dollards a pop, how much do you think the artists will get? Currently they only get a few dollars out of record sales. Just because it is being distributed on the internet doesn't mean that the middle man (the record companies) is being cut out. Notice how the deal was signed with the middle man? The people the system was meant to abolish.

    3. Why would I wan't to be part of this system? Why should I pay to access a system just so that it can leech my resources? Napster's success was based on community. When I opened up my hard drive and bandwidth to the masses, I expected to get something in return, in this case free music. Now the record companies want to do the same thing, whilst charging me for the privilage. Hell, they'll probably force you to watch ads while searching for music. Too me this doesn't seem like value for money.

    4. How can quality of service be guarranted? If i'm downloading music stored on other people's computers, how can I be sure that what i'm getting is of a good quality? Files become corrupted during transit and this can spread through out the system. If i'm paying for it, I wan't to be sure that i'm getting the genuine article, not some cheap recording off the radio. It was annoying enough when I wasn't paying for it.

    Napster, and p2p technology in general, will never become a valid way for distributing material, because it's very nature, that sense of community, isn't being up help when you are just paying to recieve a product. Issues such as quality of service can never be resolved because the machines are owned by individuals, who have no obligations to customers - as a company web server would. And in the end distribution is no cheaper, because the middle man is being retained.

  • napster?! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    is that old hunk of junk still around? theres like 20 alternatives out there now. All work good, some better than others.. check out
    www.musiccity.com
    morpheus is great! Not limited to mp3s as well. Peer2peer, encrypted, mulitiple source simultaneous downloads. Napster sold out long ago. Get over it.
  • Have you tried gnutella recently? It was nearly unusable for a long time, but for the last several months its been getting better and better. I haven't connected in a long time and seen less available than the most ever available on a single Napster server, and downloads have about the same rate of success for me on either network. The clients are also vastly improved. Try out Gnucleus or Bearshare (Windows) or Limewire (Java) or gnut (unix command line). You'll be pleasantly surprised.

    For more in-depth discussion of these issues, check out InfoAnarchy [infoanarchy.org]. Slyway [slyway.net] is a good guide to what's currently the best way to obtain music, movies, and software.

  • It seems that Xavier doesn't understand that the number of users diplayed as being online in the Napster client is the number that are logged onto the current server. It wasn't the case that there were only 7000 people on the whole service when he wrote the article; there were 7000 people on the same server as him, which means that each Napster server was carrying about that many.

    Despite him getting his facts messed up, it is true that Napster usage has slacked off tremendously: a search for "funk" yielded no results on several servers a week ago, which I felt was a telling sign. There's no more funk in the system. Go home.

    [singing] ...the day / the music died...

    David E. Weekly [weekly.org]

  • I don't believe that napster ever was *really* used to find new music by bands users had never heard of...

    Actually, I know several people who did exactly this. (To be fair, I didn't, I used it for sampling.) They didn't "type some random words", they used other techniques. One friend would type in "jpop" to find Japanese Pop music and discovered a number of artists. Other friends would search for an artist I liked, find a user sharing that file, and look for unknown artists the user also shared. Neither technique worked great, but they did work, and my friends found new music.

  • One way to learn about new bands with napster is by browsing another users files.

    When I search for a little known band that I like and find another user with a fat pipe I right click (in winblows) and select view files. I then download any other tunes I like and if the user shares common interests I might try downloading other bands that use likes.

    This is not unlike how most people learn about bands in the real world. You meet someone, determine shared musical preferences, in the process of scoping out shared preferences inevitably you uncover some bands you haven't heard before.

    The key for the indie music producers is to find their potential fan base and seed it somehow. Once there good ole word of mouth (and new fangled word-of-napster) will propagate the music to the remainder of the fan base. A good label will combine napster with a small directed marketing campaign towards influential users.
  • from the "the age" article [theage.com.au]:

    At 10.30am this morning, there were about 7,000 people swapping about 30 gigabytes of music.
    those numbers are from a single server. the stats the server sends a client isn't for the entire network. it never has been. multiply those numbers by (about) 130 and you'll get closer numbers.

    In February this year the number of simultaneous users was 1.57 million, although that number dropped to 840,000 in May.
    in light of those numbers i definitely wouldn't say "usage has totally dropped off the face of the earth.". granted, compared to what it once was usage is not great, but compared to other similar services 840k is pretty damn good.
  • And you trust those figures?
  • i used to use it to listen to find all the stuff done by someone i liked.

    for instance, i heard eminem on the radio, downloaded some of his stuff and related stuff like NWA, Snoop Dogg and so on. Now I'm a gangsta-rap fan! :) AND i paid to go and see their tour when they came to detroit ($50 each for me and 2 friends). There was no chance of that happening without napster. And ironically it was Dr Dre who was one of the movers against napster!
  • Actually, I think there is a difference. The factory CD player in my car wont play CDR's. I've tried Maxell, Imation, and multiple brands of generics. I've varied the recording speeds, and tried various tricks with closed and open sessions. Heck, I even tried using CDRW's. Nada. The player can't read the disks and just spits them back out at me.

    On a whim, I finally bought a 3-pack of Imation music CDR's and gave them a try. It worked perfectly, the first time and every time after that. Even more, my home theater system used to occasionally have problems while trying to seek through the music tracks on a burned CDR, and those problems have disappeared also. I'm not quite sure what the difference is, but there's apparently more to the "music" CDR's than RIAA royalties.
  • It seems to me that everyone's missing another crucial point here... namely that this all happened at a bad time to judge "usage." Why? Because think about who the #1 users of Napster are/were. Stumped? College kids. And where are college kids in the months from May through September? That's right, at least 90% of them are miles from their beloved ethernet connections. Sure, some (like myself) have access to cablemodems or better at home or at a summer job, but the majority of students go back to a dialup connection.

    I think it would be wise to WAIT until September/October to make a reliable estimate of usage dropoff.

    --=Major
  • The incentive is very simple. When you hear music you like, you'd like to hear more, right? Well, the artist isn't going to be able to make more without your money. So you give them money. Maybe in exchange for a fancy package, maybe just as a pure donation. But one way or the other, if you want the music to keep coming, you need to support the artists.
    The point is, you'll be paying not to get access to music in the first place, but in support and appreciation for what the artist provided you with freely.
  • The RIAA tried everything short of shutting down Napster. Now that Napster has this sort of support I can imagine that the RIAA will try something, inspite of Napster's new found support.

    Of course only time will tell.
  • As long as Napster is distributor and not publisher, then there is nothing stopping the indie labels from signing with another Napster like service.
  • This whole Napster/RIAA thing of late and fairly high CD prices have practically turned me off "songs" per se.

    I find my self going to ShoutCast, picking a station to suit my needs (mostly Trance nowadays) and listening for hours on end.

    The only problem with radio is the commercials and lack of variety. Both of these are addressed though streaming stations.

    Though, I'm sure the timer is ticking on them as well.
  • Recently there were very few files shared on Napster because of their name filtering. People just left. Gnutella has been steadily growing though. I definitely say Gnutella is the future. I doubt Napster will be able to attract all those people back if they introduce a paid service. Gnutella has a pretty good chance of staying alive, and staying free.

    just my 2 cents


  • I know that this is a good thing for Napster, but I don't think they'll ever get the userbase they had before. I know I listen to some indie label music, but I usually gain it by word of mouth / passing around a cd and then buying it.

    I wish them luck -- unfortunately, I don't think I'll be a part of it.
  • I can say that usually I'd go looking for things that were from artists that I had heard a few things of from friends. But as far as promoting the spread of new music, I'd rate napster 1 notch lower than mp3.com.

    Of course, what I would kill for is a way to hum a song to my computer that I heard on the radio on the way home from work and have it come up with the correct artist and song name. I'd pay good money for that (especially with the idiotic dj's around here -- never tell ya what the name of the song was, and if they do, you're already out of the car!)

  • hmmmm.. that name looks familiar. I've used morpheus (sp?) and when it downloads, it uses kazaa.download.xxxx I think. They're probably using the same network, but under morpheus, if you find multiple people have the exact same file, you'll download portions from those said multiple people.

    it's sweet to have cable modems!
  • Anymore, it seems as if more and more artists are just using throw-together studios. There's plenty of high-quality equipment out there, and yes, it gets pricey, but as a part-part-part time musician, instruments/amps/cymbals etc are not cheap either. You set priorities.

    Didn't Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters build a studio recently?

    I can see this happening more and more...

  • The minute Napster had to put those filters in place people left in droves. Its great that they are trying to do something to stay on their feet, but it is pointless now.

    Anyone who was serious about music swapping has long since left Napster and found greener pastures.

    Brian

    Find out why AssortedInternet.com offers the BEST Linux Web Hosting Services anywhere:
    http://www.assortedinternet.com/hosting/our-advang es.shtml


  • >>(the price of a blank CD is what now?)

    It depends on whether you buy a plain one, or the 'music' CD-R that has been specially optimized for recording music and playback in traditional CD players (read as: we sent a kickback to RIAA members)

    Funny. My plain-jane Maxells work just fine without the extra $.20 tax.

  • Is it just me, or did napster already distribute music from over 150 companies over the net? ^_^

    That wasn't distribution, that was 'aiding and abetting' distribution (remember, they weren't hosting the music at the time). Maybe this time round they'll be a traditional download service as well (e.g. 10% of Napster users actually end up being bots with addresses like indydist3.napster.com)?
  • Hey! I thought Taylor series were supposed to be infinite.
  • Why does mr_gerbik have panties to throw at the monitor?

  • FWIW, I've never used Napster. Its continuance as a going concern means little to me. The alt.binaries.sounds.mp3* groups on Usenet get a fair amount of traffic, and the particular groups I've checked have usually had a fair variety of stuff in them. Usenet has always been a decentralized, distributed message network with no controlling authority, so there's no single choke point through which a newsgroup can be cut off. (A particular service provider might decide to stop carrying a few newsgroups [slashdot.org], but there are thousands more servers worldwide that continue to carry those groups.)

    Sure, it takes a little more knowledge to post and retrieve large binaries, but I don't see that as doing much more than keeping the AOLers and other lamers away. I'd like to see the RIAA just try to shut down the alt.binaries.sounds.mp3* hierarchy worldwide. They might roll a few weak-kneed domestic ISPs, but it'd be funny to see the reaction from some ISP in Bumfuckistan to an RIAA C&D.

  • Headline: "Napster Users Plummet"

    Good God! The RIAA is pushing them out of helicopters now! Oh, the humanity...
  • hehe, dont worry about it. After all, I was paraphrasing the book "The Working Life" by Joanne B. Ciulla and god knows who she was paraphrasing.
  • The point of the tale: once you're getting paid it is no longer about fun anymore. By the last day the children felt that they deserved to be paid and so they were no longer willing to do for free what they used to do for fun.

  • Classic Jewish Tale (Score:4)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @08:32AM (#127473) Homepage
    There once was a taylor who moved to the South and opened a store. The Klu Klux Klan got wind of this and sent some children to yell nasty names and curses outside his store. The taylor saw that these children would drive away his business so he quickly dashed outside and said to the children "I will give each of you a quarter to keep swearing at my store." The children happily agreed, took the money, and continued swearing. The next day they came back and the taylor said "oh, I'm afraid the quaters were just for yesterday, today I will only give you a dime each." The children were a little upset but they took the money and kept swearing. The next day the taylor only offered them a nickle each, half the children left but the other half were happy to swear at his store for a nickle. The next day even more children gave up because the taylor would only pay them a penny each and on the last day none of the children would swear at his store because the taylor refused to pay them at all.
    --
  • > Headline: "Napster Users Plummet"
    > Good God! The RIAA is pushing them out of helicopters now! Oh, the humanity...

    "Goldman Sachs as my witness, I honestly thought those dot-com business plans could fly!"

  • I'd like to see CD volume sales figures from this spring. If the RIAA is to be believed, the 2 order of magnitude decrease in Napster usage should translate into a CD sale increase. Granted it won't be proof of causation, but the short time of the change will rule out the long-term market fluctuations which distorted data about CD sales as Napster rose to power over 2 years.

    My bet is on no significant change, and I'd love to see a decrease.
  • a search for "funk" yielded no results on several servers a week ago, which I felt was a telling sign.

    As I understand it, not only are certain filenames being blocked, but also certain words in a search are set to return no results without any actual search being performed. This prevents partially-misspelled filenames from being found - if you can't search for them, you can't find them. In all likelihood there were thousands of files with the word "funk" in them, and quite possibly many of those recordings were not RIAA-owned material, but your search got nipped in the bud.
    ----
    "Here to discuss how the AOL merger will affect consumers is the CEO of AOL."

  • The story says he's a fan of Moby and Paul Oakenfold. Why am I not surprised at his taste for least-common-denominator electronic music?

    Anyway, this deal likely only covers Moby's most recent work on Mute, not his earlier releases on WEA and Instinct.

    As for Oakenfold, it seems odd that Napster would cite his inclusion in the deal - his discs are generally mixed compilations of material by other musicians, which suggests major licensing issues to me. That is, do the interlabel agreements by which these compilations are put together cover online distribution? Time will tell.
  • ...that's exactly what I used Napster for.
    If I knew what songs I wanted to listen to, I'd start WinAmp going with the copy of my CD that I ripped. But when it comes to finding new stuff, I've only got so many hours in the day, and I can't be bothered figuring out who Kool Keith's done work under an alias with this month, what other monikers Haujobb and Mouse on Mars are recording under and what new and hip crap will blow my mind that I've never even heard of.
    So what to do? Search for artists I already know and like and look at the shared files of the people who have them. Plenty of "duhs", some head scratching (what are Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears doing alongside Carcass and Napalm Death?), and even the occasional gem.
    That right there is my biggest gripe with Gnutella: I can't tell what files the guy on the other end's hosting.
  • This is all redundant, I'm sure, but... According to that second article, they go from 1.75 million users to about 7,000? I'm amazed. Basically, the free nature of the service accounts for about 1,743,000 extra users. There isn't a single person in marketing who can't figure out a way to turn that demographic into a source of revenue?

    Sure they could, but it's too hard.

    In the wild, male lions are known to try and kill lion cubs to eliminate competition for food.

    All these Napster deals are just the lion killing the cubs. If you're big enough, racketeering is always easier and more profitable than legitimizing your business, especially when you also write the laws.

  • The real message... (Score:3)

    by BierGuzzl ( 92635 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @08:23AM (#127480)
    From the article:
    For these labels - which represent about 25% of the UK market - getting their music to consumers is a burning issue.
    Good to see that the traditional media's punny nature is alive and well.

  • Since when does Napster distribute music? (Score:3)

    by BierGuzzl ( 92635 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @08:28AM (#127481)
    Napster indexes music, it lists it, it allows you to search it's indexes, it provides forums to talk about music, and it gets blamed for pirating software, then taken to court, and now pays an undisclosed amount to distribute music -- something it doesn't do anyways!

  • Forget Napster. They still haven't come up with a system that will accrurately compensate rights holders, nor have they managed to strike deals with publishers.

    Flipr [flipr.com], meanwhile, has a system in place that will track all downloads on their network, and have already managed to sign a deal with a major publisher.

    Check out this Wired [wired.com] story on Flipr.

    Note: I work for Flipr.I've had this job for a year and we're a linux shop. Best job I ever had.

  • No. The artist gets paid 4 cents per downloaded song. Revenue is generated by subscription and ancillary services.

  • If we're bust in 8 months time, I'll have been working in a linux environment, learning everyday, for 2 1/2 years. Not bad. I've had fun, and have never been under the illusion known as job security

    Not only that, this is good model for everyone if we can show that it'll make money. The music consumer wins, and so does the musician. What's wrong with that?

    So I could be out of a job in 8 months. Are *you* going to have a job in months?

  • My Bandwidth (Score:5)

    by rprycem ( 113790 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @08:04AM (#127485)
    They forgot signing me in to the deal. It is I the user that is supplying all the real product, why with my harddrive space sending out files over my bandwidth. Where is my cut?
  • This sure is not the same ole Napster I used when it first came out. Napster was ALL about free trading.

    Napster is dead. R.I.P.
  • Finally, news about Napster that's worth hearing.

    It seems to me, if I'm understanding this correctly, that I'll be able to legally purchase imports and indy records from Europe without paying insanely inflated prices and without the traditional long wait.

    Personally, this is extremely exciting to me as it fills a market niche that previously has been suffering in the brick and mortar methodology. It no longer matters where I am, what the local stores are willing to risk stocking, or what the popular music of the day is on the radio. I can get the latest releases of the bands I actually want to listen to quickly and cheaply and those bands will probably see (I'm assuming) some portion of that money.

    Two thumbs up for once.

  • I thought all hope was lost until I read this... (Score:5)

    by mr_gerbik ( 122036 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @08:11AM (#127488)
    "The agreement covers music from more than 150 record companies, including artists such as Stereophonics, Moby, Ash, Paul Oakenfold, Underworld and Tom Jones."

    If anyone can save Napster, its Tom Jones! When I heard the news, I threw my panties at the monitor!

    -gerbik
  • When asked about falling user numbers, Mr Barry pointed to falling record sales in the US generally© He added: "We have been complying with the court injunction©©© As we move into the new service, hopefully we will be able to jettison that baggage, hopefully we will be able to move forward©"

    The falling numbers would have nothing to do with the fact that there's hardly any music on napster anymore, right?
    I like to search for live Phish stuff ¥which is perfectly legal since you can't charge money for it but for some reason, it's all blocked, making napster completely useless to me© They went with an overly broad filtering method, and killed the service©
    Well, on to freenet and gnutella©
  • Morpheus [musiccity.com] is virtually Kazaa [kazaa.com] with a different GUI. It uses a Gnutella-like hybrid protocol.

    While it is probably possible to shut it down, it will be more difficult to do then just to go to Music City and tell them to shut down thier servers. Alteast I hope it isn't that easy to shut down. Morpheus in my opinion is Napster done right (if you don't mind the annoying GUI!)
  • Well, when you consider the drop in users, 1.5 mil to tens of thousands, I'm just guessing that they have the bandwidth and server power :-P
  • So you DO see my point. Lots of musicicans think "owning" music is just plain silly....

  • Settliers Sign Indian Deal! (Score:3)

    by BiggestPOS ( 139071 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @07:58AM (#127493) Homepage
    In breaking news today, natives on the island of Manhattan traded their property rights for a bunch of BEADS! What a great deal.

  • To quote a wise man.. (Score:5)

    by LordOfYourPants ( 145342 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @08:03AM (#127494)
    "If I wanted to pay, I wouldn't be using Napster."
  • Who cares about a cut? It allows you to show support and advertise for your favorite indie band. I think that is a good idea personally, and if for a indie band I liked I wouldn't mind wasting some bandwidth to promote their stuff...
    -- Judas96
    "...don't take a nerf bat to a knife fight." - Joe Rogan, said on News Radio
  • Yes, but it's a matter of time before Morpheus becomes as big as Napster

    326895 users online, sharing 29106K files (125698.0 GB)

    125698.0 GB. That's over 122 TB. Looks like Morpheus is already waaaaaay bigger than Napster ever was (even after you consider that Morpheus allows more than just MP3s to be shared).

    ---
    DOOR!!
  • would you pay 5$ per month to use napster? - not me

    I would, if and only if:

    * A GOOD selection was available
    * High-quality MP3s (160-192 kbps and up) were readily available
    * Compensation was fair -- pay the artists, not the RIAA
    * The connections were reliable

    These conditions imply a few things; mainly, the MP3s will have to be stored centrally for this to work. This alone won't be cheap, but if it works, I'm all for it. But I wouldn't pay for Napster as it is right now, especially after the RIAA shut 99% of it down.

    ---
    DOOR!!
  • Interesting, that second article mentioned. I, of course, am one of those 7,000 remaining users. So where exactly are all the other /.ers that were using Napster for "legitimate" uses?
  • I too continue to be rewarded by Napster. I have for 2 years now. I do not mourn the passing of the "top 40" files. What I enjoy is mineing through the existing files available. I have found many worldclass artists; West Africa, North Africa, Eastern Europe, and East SA. I still spend way too much time online. So long as I can access new music I will strongly consider paying when a deal is offered by Napster.
  • Wait untill all the poor college kids go back to school, ethernet is free, and procrastination is king...then maybe we'll see an increase in the Napster user base once again (I know I'll start using it again!). It isn't really too hard to find a (popular) song once you try a few misspellings anyway...
  • That was the part that I don't quite get, to use napster you had to know either the song or the artist; which if you are looking for new indie music which you hadn't heard before... well you were screwed (there was the "featured music" but can anyone honestly say that was their primary use of napster???) They are going to have to change some major things to the client to get something like this going.

    I don't believe that napster ever was *really* used to find new music by bands users had never heard of; sure they could find stuff but who's main use of napster was to out type some random words in and download music you never heard of. I'm sure it was done, but I'd guess it was next to nothing compared to everything else.
  • That was the part that I don't quite get, to use napster you had to know either the song or the artist; which if you are looking for new indie music which you hadn't heard before... well you were screwed
    Hotlist. You search for some music you like. You add people who have that song to your hotlist and then see what else they have.
  • As much as I love Napster (irc, gnutella, et al.) I still don't see how giving away music is a viable way to sell CD's. If I can get music, artwork, lyrics, a blank cd and slap it all together at home for $3, why pay $15+?

    I will be the first to admit that I get turned on by new music via the web, and it has more than once prompted me to go out and purchase 'the' CD. The problem IMO is that as technology advances, you'll be able to basically replicate a store-bought CD.

    So what rewards are there for musicians? Concert tickets? T-Shirts? I don't know all the economics of it, but it seems to me the bread 'n butter of a great band is its CD sales.

    That said, free the music.

  • I just switched to Ogg Vorbis and Napster is going to make a comeback? Oh, we'll have to pay them to share stuff? Oh. Um. Back to oggenc'ing I guess.
  • Bah.. I think he was going for "disturbed". Yes Napster is disturbed. It's like a zombie, everyone's abandoned it and jumped on OpenNap servers, yet the central corporation still thinks it can steal our eyeballs after it's pushed us away. I think it's funny.
  • perhaps napster will host the songs they licensed on their servers and use their bandwidth, not yours to distribute the music. they'll sure have to have some huge bandwidth..
    the real product is that they've been forced into this position by the courts. i have some real doubts that napster will ever get the user base it was supposidly promised. (would you pay 5$ per month to use napster? - not me) napster was so last year. i wish the media would get with the times.
  • less sales of singles...

    the price of singles has gone up here recently, don't know about anywhere else...

    you can prove just about anything you like with statistics, the RIAA know exactly how to report the latest figures with the best spin.

    but the bottom line is that they don't want to change the way the music industry works, with maybe one good song bundled with a stacks of songs you don't want. there's no reason we can't have burned-to-order cds... some places already sell them.

  • whether Napster will also offer a more sophisticated directory service. The deal is about independent, alternative music. Music that most of the teenies do not know but might appreciate. So by signing a deal with them and make it worthwhile for a) the per download share and b) the promotion factor how will it work? The lame chatrooms and even more lame homepage are not going to do much good here. Id like to see something like "oh, you are looking for song a, here it is and btw you might like that band, too". Something in a better whats related style. And if the "other" (non-Napsterized) music labels see these labels eating on their piece of the cake they might want to buy into the whole Napster thing, too. And this would be good for everybody. And yes, I will pay for the service and so should you ...
    Just my $.02
  • Napster is dead already. For those of you that didn't get the memo, "Dogs Barking. Can't fly without umbrella!". <emit>Sound of Dieing Giraffe</emit>

    There are many alternatives currently available or under construction. Hotline [bigredh.com], Direct Connect [neo-modus.com], Gnutella [wego.com], Espra [espra.net], Google. :)

    Behold the next wave.
  • The major labels pay pennies on the dollar for records sales to the artist, who must also typically pay for all studio time and many production costs. I would like to think that this will allow better exposure for indie labels who are often at the mercy of the corporate megaliths, especially when it comes to distribution. (Many smaller labels are forced to use major label distribution companies to get their music out into the wde world.) Perhaps this will herald an internet-only record label? (Quick, patent it!) Seems feasible due to the low overhead. Would we bother to seek it out and listen?

    Root Down
    grep what I sed?
  • Cool photo [bbc.co.uk] of a "Zetland" foal, the result of unsupervised interaction between a Shetland pony and a zebra. It's sooo cute! You can go see it for yourself at Eden Ostrich World [ostrich-world.com].

    Systems were made to be circumvented.

  • I think it was... (Score:3)

    by briggsb ( 217215 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @08:11AM (#127512)
    download-proof albums like Metallica's Download This [bbspot.com] that really stymied Napster, and not the RIAA lawsuit.
  • You obviusly haven't heard his version of "Burning down the house"
  • When you offer a product you can compete on three properties. Price, Quality and Convenience. So if you product is cheaper, better and easy to get than your competitors you will win. Obviously firms might just be better, or easier to get, you dont have to compete on all three.

    The problem with this model is you are not guaranteed proper quality. Why should I pay to get MP3's that may or may not be good? Why should I have to pay to spend my time searching around trying a few downloads to get a good MP3. When it was free, the cost to the consumer was the time spent finding good MP'3.

    Now I am going to get mighy pissed off doing the same plus having the right to pay to do it. This is a problem on two levels. When the service was free people would leave their napster clients on all the time. Thus the amount of MP3's available to share was large. The problem now will be people might only leave their clients open when they are looking or stuff, so the total number of MP3's available will fall. If its a subscription based service, thats even worse, because who here is going to subscribe to EVERY month of the year. I would rather subscribe maybe once every other month of the year, and go nuts downloading stuff so i save money. So basically you should expect to get less files shared. Which is a deterent to using the service in the first place. Napster will find it difficult to gain from the previous network externalities is enjoyed when the service was free.

    Basically they have to design a model where NAPSTER serves the files. I know its not P2P, but without doing that they cannot guarantee quality or convience. I would happily pay to go to a central server, knowing all the songs will be there, all in various qualities, and all be available when I want them. Suddenly Im not paying for the right to go and find MP3's but im also paying for the improved quality and convience in finding them.

    So basically, unless you pay the users as well in a P2P app, to provide bandwidth , hard space etc, it will fail miserably.

  • Napster's Situation (Score:4)

    by Afreet1 ( 224290 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @08:39AM (#127515)
    The entire napster idea was great in its original state because of the sheer volume allowed for great redundancy. If I wanted to get a certain song, I could download 3 different instances and when they completed compare the length and fidelity to ensure it sounded as close to a CD as possible.

    The new napster could have a sustained volume of the old eventually, the problem is that if I am now going to pay the artists (which is definitely a necessary action), I want the recording to come FROM the artist. I want to make sure that when I pay for my song I get a rip from the master recording or a full digital copy, not someone's 5 year old Sound Blaster value recording an analogue track from a dinged and scratched source CD.

    The problem with this model is that all of the sudden you have to distribute these high quality mp3s and in various bitrate/size combinations to satisfy all of the various user types out there. To do this you either need to setup servers or give all versions to the most active users hoping that the music is of the genre that he/she listens to.

    In the end the business looks very similar to the original server-based content delivery model that Akamai employs currently.
  • I htink its some kind of virus or something. It knocked my school network connection down for about a month one time. They they got smart and found it, and limited its bandwidth, so you could game effectivly again!! What was the original purpose for school again I forgot...

  • What's with the insane drop-off? (Score:4)

    by wrinkledshirt ( 228541 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @09:29AM (#127517) Homepage
    This is all redundant, I'm sure, but... According to that second article, they go from 1.75 million users to about 7,000?

    I'm amazed. Basically, the free nature of the service accounts for about 1,743,000 extra users. There isn't a single person in marketing who can't figure out a way to turn that demographic into a source of revenue?

    You've got news websites out there giving away their content for free all the time and they're still alive -- and they don't have nearly the amount of dedicated traffic that Napster had in its heydey. What is it that is handcuffing Napster now?

    They could advertise albums and shows, offer live show ticket sales and take a cut, set up some form of voluntary payment system which will lead to value-added service (customized server-side database options, notifications, rebates on ticket purchases or album purchases, better cient software), generate a good server-side file-sharing engine and license it (a la google), have high-quality custom-made CDs that'll get shipped to your home within the week, and those five are just off the top of my head.

    (Oh yeah, and consider some kind of middleman elimination to get rid of the recording studios -- any system that charges $20 a CD, gives only a fraction of that in royalties to the artist and basically costs less than a buck to make, DEFINITELY needs to trim the fat, and is upping base costs everywhere. I think Napster would find it easier to offer a free service if they didn't have to help pay for mansions in Beverly Hills for people who don't even make the music.)

    Subscription-based services fail when what you're trying to charge has already been offered for free. So many sites tried doing this before and then reinstated the free services when the community dropped off -- I remember when Starwave got bought by ESPN and tried to make you have to sign up and pay just to see things like basketball stats... you can bet that didn't last long. Turn Napster into THE primary industry marketing machine, and you've got a chance. Otherwise, the underground will keep swapping and the music companies will just keep missing the boat, not to mention the point.

  • Damn straight. I'm not going to pay for something when there are viable alternatives. And what a foolish notion to think that anybody would be willing to pay for something that can be had for free. (except for those linux distro's on the shelf at compUSA, some idiot must be buying them...perhaps the same idiot will pay for napster....)
  • What you want is more or less what MP3.com does. They have their own servers, with songs in various bitrates.

    If this is what Napster have to do to survive, I think the coompany is doomed, since theyll have to compete with MP3.com.

    --
  • That's what some wise guy said but forgot to mention at what cost.

    I sympathise with you Napster. Keep trying and perhaps your show will go on.

  • I wonder if Napster actually thinks anyone will buy this?
    I just switched over to Morpheus, and I can get Mp3s and Simpsons Episodes! WooHoo!
  • Napster is dead..the real battle for the RIAA'tards is Gnutella clones.

  • Re:Translation plz... (Score:3)

    by RareHeintz ( 244414 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @09:22AM (#127523) Homepage Journal
    Here's a reference to the common geekish use of "samizdat [tuxedo.org]".

    OK,
    - B
    --

  • Yowza... (Score:4)

    by RareHeintz ( 244414 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @08:04AM (#127524) Homepage Journal
    Well, I think we all (or most of us) hoped Napster would kill the major labels (preferably without killing the artists in the process), but I think we all knew that it wouldn't happen by choking off the labels' revenue - in fact, I'm sure we've all seen stories about the studies that say that CD sales may have increased as a result of Napster usage.

    But maybe this is how it will happen: As production means get cheaper and cheaper (the price of a blank CD is what now?) and the barriers to product entry have more to do with product awareness and promotion (e.g., huge advertising budgets and back-door payola like the major labels do), Napster can now provide a viable, viral marketing alternative to the media-saturation tactics of the majors. Smaller, lower-overhead operations may soon have a significant advantage over the corporate behemoths.

    Samizdat killed the radio star, babe.

    OK,
    - B
    --

  • It's not quite humming, but get yourself a Sony E-Marker [emarker.com]. It's essentially a time stamper that looks in a database that major market radio stations use.

    Advantages:
    1. It'll tell you the name and artist of the song you were listening to.
    2. It's $20.
    3. It fits on your keychain.

    Disadvantages:
    1. It doesn't cover every station (especially not college stations).
    2. The web site has a really irritating Flash interface.
    3. You've gotta live in a major metropolitan area.
    4. It's too easy to accidentally press the button when you carry your keys in your pocket.

    But for $20, it's nice to have the gadget work 80% of the time.

    (It's also useful for when you want to remember what MP3s you want to download when you get home. Probably not what Sony intended, though.)

  • Sadly, Napster is now little more than a security test platform for the recording industry. I remember when on typical evenings there would be nearly a million files available. Now it tends to be under 40,000. A 95% drop in activity underscores the fact that Napster isn't really serving the public any more. Instead of developing better and better filtering techniques, which the record companies will own when they divvy up Napsters assets, it would be more in the public interest if they just closed up shop.
  • Is that a Linux distro for country folk?
  • OOPS! I guess I accidently enocded all of my britney spears songs as TOOL songs. Oh well, its only 1.00 each to try again.....just dont download from brintneylvr45.
  • I suppose "open-sourcing" comments [kuro5hin.org] from Kuro5hin is really useful in bolstering Slashdot's discussions.
  • Good lord, this sounds exactly like American capitalism!

    Over the past twenty-five years we've seen a broad decline in real earnings and spending power. Meanwhile, true growth has only affected the ruling class...
  • Knock Napster all you want, but at a certain point it achieved a critical mass that allowed you to find virtually anything. I wonder if I'd ever have seen my taste in music expand so much without being able to rove through its huge listings of foreign, experimental, and long-forgotten recordings. Musically, it became, briefly, for me, anyway, the digital equivalent of the Great Library at Alexandria....

    For that, I'm thankful to Napster -- a bunch of venture capitalists the world round saw fit to introduce me to tons and tons of unusual music. For free! So, actually, it's the venture capitalists to whom I owe thanks: your misspent millions really were enjoyed over here, guys.

    Of course, that could only have happened as long as it was all free, encouraging everyone and his Swahili uncle to jump in. Sure, the idea wasn't altruistic; the good Napster funders always planned to extract gold from the service once they'd found a means to do so.

    Now that (ostensibly) they finally have, most people have departed for greener pastures. Greener pastures, mind, that they showed how to plant. Hoping to get richer, they merely succeeded in creating the paradigm for sharing music on a vast public scale -- without making anyone richer. Brilliant move, that one. And now with their newly signed contracts for Tom Jones recordings they want to be paid. Hee hee! What's new, Pussycat? :)
  • I'm not disagreeing with you, because I wouldn't pay for it either. The question is, would the average current Napster user pay for it? I'm thinking all the people who have trouble just spelling "p.c.", let alone using one. It might not occur to most of them that they paying for the right to let other people use their resources. Most of the people on Napster aren't aware of other file-sharing options, so will remain convinced that this is the only game in town.
    Just my $.02

  • Coming soon to a mailbox near you: (Score:3)

    by blair1q ( 305137 ) on Tuesday June 26, 2001 @08:37AM (#127533) Journal

    Get 40 downloads for only a penny!

    Napster is in with the record companies, and is now becoming a record company.

    How long before it's a buck a rip, $16 for a full album?

    --Blair
  • The RIAA only cares about artists under their billing. I think if this takes off[gnotella distributions, Direct Connect, etc could kill Napster now that it's a pay per download deal] the RIAA will jump on the bandwagon. Everyone knows Indie groups do it best and first.

    New Wave was making Videos before MTV came out, and then when MTV hit, it took mainstream pop artists a couple years to catch up to the great idea New Wave had.

    anyway- i think Napster will sink since people have to pay.
  • Napster signing a deal with 150 record companies to distrube their music over the net... Funny...Given the vast number of club remixes of songs available for download, I thought Napster didn't need deals to disturb music.

  • That's an incredibly insightful tale. I'm not sure how it applies, but damn is it ever insightful.
    --
  • While Gnutella is OK, I've found two other P2P sharing services that work way better. Check out Kazaa at http://www.kazaa.com and Tripnosis at http://www.tripnosis.com They're not Gnutella skins, and they tend to work better than Bearshare, Limewire, etc.
  • Napster, once the bad boy of music sites is finally going legit, something they really should have done in the first place. Now they are signing licensing deals - the opt-in system.

    Now the question is, will the users come back in droves, or will it be an easier-to-use version of mp3.com? First, Napster is destined to be a pay site. A lot of Napster's user base were teens looking for free tunes. Another question is that these are indie labels they're dealing with now. most of those teens were looking for mainstream, big-label music.

    However, it does give the indies a portal for distribution over the net, exposure that the "big labels" are unlikely to take soon. And Napster can now work on removing the stigma of a "piracy site".

    Only time will tell for sure.
  • Napster was taken to court for vicarious copyright infringement. This means, even though Napster itself did not violate copright law being making illegal copies of songs, it contributed to it billions of times by allowing people to search indexes and download off of others.

    In other words, it wasn't the criminal, but it was the getaway car.

    As for the forums, they're closed right now. I used to be a forum regular, nick=kdogg731.
  • Is it just me, or did napster already distribute music from over 150 companies over the net? ^_^

    ---
  • Hemos obviously recognized the living nature of our language and his abiility to shape it. Ingeniously, he has created a single word to describe the fact that Napster does not actually distribute anything but it's client software.

    Distrube: a combination of distribute [dictionary.com], rude [dictionary.com], rube [dictionary.com], and ruse [dictionary.com], emphasizing DIS-ing the user and making reference to a Rube Goldberg [rubegoldberg.com] device.

    The creative brainpower astounds.

  • Not only is Napster completely deserted by users now, charging for songs will only get rid of those last few poeple. With the the .com crash I'm honestly suprised that these companies are dumb enough to invest even MORE money in what is obviously a dead end venture. Napster is now just a black hole, sucking up any money anyone is willing to put into it.
  • Napster, in it's present state, could have some redeeming value if users were not left to 'blindly' search for their desired tunes. If users had the ability to browse the database of material, rather than just their own search results, we might stand a chance of finding some satisfying--albeit unfamiliar--music.

    Last time i logged on, there were still some 70-80Gb of data available, but 70-80Gb of what? Stuff i can never find unless i know precisely what to look for, or stuff i can find if i get really creative with the name, and hope some user out there has successfully done the same?

    Doubtful we'll enjoy the thrill again, of accessing the massive data free-for-all that napster once was, but napster is tossing out the 'baby' of a gargantuan selection along with the 'bathwater' of it's legal troubles. Given the ability to browse the database, we might still be able to find some musical gems among the Irish traditionals (maybe), religious music (don't look at me), or show tunes (as if) still available on the network. I suppose they'd rather take us for AOLers or MSNers and lead us by the nose to the highest-promoted-artist-of-the-week.

    Use of this .sig is protected by international copyright laws.

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