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."
Up to 50 tracks (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Up to 50 tracks (Score:5, Funny)
Most of the tracks on (the new) Napster are in a proprietary format, which means that (if you copied them somewhere else) they wouldn't work. At all. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it set off some sort of alarm. Or made your computer explode.
AARghhh...
Re:Up to 50 tracks (Score:5, Funny)
It can happen. It was reported in the Weekly World News [codetroop.com]
Re:Up to 50 tracks (Score:3, Interesting)
THE RIAA SHOULD SUPPLY THE MUSIC (Score:3, Informative)
|
o|oo U RIAA
Re:Up to 50 tracks (Score:2)
So that explains it! People must be buying macs just because they look cool!
I'm sure technological innovations and an all around better computing experience have absolutely nothing to do with it.
--
And if you believe that, I've got a pay-per-download digital music service to sell you...
Sorry, if I'm paying for it, (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sorry, if I'm paying for it, (Score:2)
What's the point (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:What's the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's the point (Score:2)
Re:What's the point (Score:2)
I wonder what the state of affairs in p2p would be if these power-users were taken out. Most people have to save bandwidth and don't do a lot of sharing (few files, or outgoing traffic turned off completely) because it drives up the overall traffic counter. I myself use a cable modem and have a fair use clause that limits me to 5 GB. I have exceeded this probably in every month since i have the service, but not excessively (like 10-15GB/month). If I would be sharing all my stuff with full throttle i'd probably ring up 10GB a night.
So the advance of a serverless, true p2p network that can't be taken out might fail at the providers legal gibberish because no one can afford to share bigtime.
50 tracks a month? (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides, I've often downloaded a great song and said, "hey, I want more!" And bought the CD.. If I can't find good/new music, buying CD's is something that really wouldn't enter my mind.
Re:50 tracks a month? (Score:2)
Gnutella clients do suck. I haven't been impressed with any yet, especially BearShare and it's infamous spyware.
Generally the system itself isn't that great. While I can find 10,000 results on something, it takes for 10 minutes to find a client that I can actually connect to and will transfer the file at a reasonable rate.
So if I can get fast and reliable transfers, and the ability to find NEW music that I was previously unaware of, then it would be worth a few bucks a month. Of course, they would need a reliable system for detecting broken transfers.
Re:50 tracks a month? (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, so let's see. I can use Napster for an undisclosed fee (I'm betting on the neighborhood of $10/month) and get 50 tracks, which I have to get by trusting that the person on the other end ripped correctly. Plus I have to donate my own bandwith to do it. (Excuse me? I'm paying them to use my bandwidth? Did I miss where this is a good deal?)
Or I can go to emusic.com [emusic.com] and pay $9.99 per month and legally download as many MP3s as my greedy heart desires. Plus they're categorized and ripped by people whose job it is to do this all day, so they're presumably of good quality. Plus I can download entire albums at once. Plus I don't have to share my collection with anyone, or let anyone scan my hard drive.
Hmm, tough choice. Napster is doomed. (Disclaimer: I don't own any emusic stock. I don't even know if they're publicly traded. I don't even have an account there. So there.)
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!
Napster Died a long time ago... (Score:5, Funny)
Napster now is like a little animal that got hit by a car but refuses to die. There's blood everywhere, and it just keeps flopping around prolonging the inevitable. They're only bringing shame to themselves at this point. It's pathetic.
Could they just hurry up and die already?
Re:Napster Died a long time ago... (Score:2)
Nope. I've said it before and I'll say it again. None of the services are going to do gang busters. They may trudge along and not lose horrid amounts of money, but they're not going to be reaping in the profits like they think they will.
Why? Its cheaper to buy CDs that aren't copy controled. Sure, the big 5 are trying to make CDs uncopyable, but as Lessig (I believe) said that's a mere speed bump in the road. It'll slow ya down, but it won't stop you. So pay $16 (or $10 as some are now predicting) for a CD and do what the hell you want / take it where the hell you want or $10 a month to rent 50 songs that have lower fidelity, can only be played on your computer, etc. Hmmm.. which choice am I going to make....
Of course, it won't be spun that way. Broadband/Hackers/Communists/Thieves/College Kids will be blamed by PressPlay/Napster/MusicNet/et al instead of their lack of a compelling product.
Re:Napster Died a long time ago... (Score:5, Informative)
>>pay-for-mp3's thing to take off?
You know - I'd be willing to pay.
Seriously, for $1 or $2 per song I'd probably spend a fortune. I totally believe that the artists (and the record companies --- they do pay for the promotion and all the associated crap even though they are pure evil) deserve to be paid.
BUT........
Nobody who is putting together one of these systems is interested in that. They want to put a bazillion restrictions on me. It's in a proprietary,locked format. You can't dump it to your portable MP3 player. You can't burn it onto a CD to play it into a car. If you cancel your subscription you LOSE ALL THE MUSIC YOU'VE PAID FOR (No - i'm not making this one up. I believe it's PressPlay that does that. You only have access to the tracks you've paid for as long as you keep kicking up monthly cash).
So instead of getting some of my money - they don't get any. They just don't get it - and I don't know if they ever will. If you're going to try to rob me of the basic freedoms I have with CD based audio, there is ZERO chance you're going to get me on board.
Sorry folks - they days of paying $15-20 for a CD (and at LEAST $6-8 more compared to the exact same album on tape) are over. You've milked that cow long enough.
If i could pay for the mp3 tracks i wanted i bet i'd end up spending at least $30 a month. (I listen to a lot of club music that i couldn't buy in a store because it's just not there). Instead - I spend nothing and slurp it all off the net. I honestly can't remember the last CD I purchased (not including blanks of course )
The sooner the labels realize this the better. But they won't.
They'll keep kicking and screaming, sponsoring new legislation trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
Too late. Sorry. So sad.
Show me. (Score:2)
eMusic.com exists, and other, similar, services probably do as well.
So, I suppose we'll find out now if all that Slashdotter hot air had any substance. I have a feeling that many of the people who espoused the above sentiment, when given the chance to actually pay for the music, won't give up their gNapster, Morpheus or what-have-you.
-grendel drago
[*toot* celebrating my 350th post, whee!]
Re:Show me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't see a single thing I wanted.
Thats my whole point. The only stuff that is being released digitally is:
a) alternative, fringe, old, or otherwise stuff that I don't want.
b) the latest and greatest, with the largest collections, but saddled with so many conditions and restrictions I'd be throwing away money.
Sure - eMusic.com is *something*, but it sure ain't what I want. This afternoon I downloaded 30 tracks off AudioGalaxy. I just searched for them on eMusic. Nope - not a single one.
>>put your money where your mouth is.
Show me somewhere i can spend my money that offers the service and selection i'm expecting. eMusic sure ain't it. I know eMusic isn't the only game in town, but it's very representative.
This has nothing to do with 'hot air'. If i'm looking to pay for a particular song, i want that song. I don't want some other generic or substitute from the same 'genre'. This isn't like going to the supermarket and substituting one brand of milk for another.
Re:Show me. (Score:2)
If you like jazz, you should checkout eMusic's collection. They have some great stuff - like complete recording sets of Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans and so on.
eMusic also has lots of comedy albums. For example, most of George Carlin's stuff is there. I was able to play for my son (who's 14) the "Class Clown" albums I listened to, when I was 15. In fact the latest George Carlin HBO special already appeared on eMusic.
Re:Napster Died a long time ago... (Score:2)
Think about that for a second. If an MP3 is ripped from a CD (even at 512kbps) it can't have better quality than the CD. The mp3s encoder can't create audio content that isn't there.
Re:Napster Died a long time ago... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Napster Died a long time ago... (Score:2)
"CD quality" means that at that level, most people don't have good enough stereo equipment to discern the difference.
listen to any song with heavy drums, you can hear the MP3 mess quite well when the high hats come in. that isn't there on CD. 192 bit is "CD-quality" for me.
but since you obviously can't hear the difference, i reccomend you save yourself the harddrive space.
Who said anything about ripping from CDs? (Score:2)
Quality of service (Score:2, Troll)
1. pay about $10/month for the chance to get 50 tracks, of which 25 actually came through.
2. pay nothing and get a 90% or better rate on downloading tracks.
I think I will take door number 2 please.
Napster from an (ex)employee's perspective (Score:5, Funny)
The only thing I can say is they are getting
what they deserve. Any company that treats people
like napster treated their employees, deserves
to die a slow painful death, what they are doing.
I was the 6th systems administrator in less than 2 years to quit, and apparently 4 have quit since I left. The only ironic part is after I left, they fired the main sources of problems.. their incompetent executive staff.. Their IT manager was fired thank goodness, he was a nepotism hire by their vp of engineering Eddie Kessler, who was also fired.
Let them rot, and let the music be free.
Re:Napster from an (ex)employee's perspective (Score:5, Funny)
Customer: I was in a rush. I needed to change a $50. I wanted a twenty and two tens...
Bank Rep: Well, our computers caught the mistake RIGHT AWAY! We made sure he got the right change.
Customer: They helped me out when I needed change for the payphone. Thanks Change Bank!
Bank Rep: We are asked how we make money. Volume. We simply do it on volume.
Who wants to pay for Napster? (Score:5, Funny)
If only there was something like that available...
Re:Who wants to pay for Napster? (Score:2)
- The RIAA members would collude to keep prices unreasonably high (2000% markup from manufacturing costs, etc, etc), prices almost unchanged after 20 years, RIAA members sitting on product they own but don't want to release rendering it unavailable
- You would have to spend large amounts of time searching through bins in stores or on-line services to find one of these things. If you're tastes are eclectic like mine, that could be a hassle.
- If you are lucky enough to find one in a store, great, otherwise they would special order it and you'd get it in 4-6 weeks (*cough*Borders*cough)
- If you have to resort to online services, you'll have to pay for shipping, and still wait until the thing to arrive via USPS/UPS/etc.
- And last they'd probably do something stupid like package these things in flimsy and brittle plastic containers that would break when you so much as look at them wrong. Naah, now I'm just being perverse.
Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I don't know if your solution is the best one we can imagine. However, I'm sure the RIAA is trying to find ways to use technology to enhance their customers' buying experience and maximize their legally guaranteed "fair-use" rights.
Re:Who wants to pay for Napster? (Score:2, Informative)
I suggest the plus sign, because it could signify sarcasm while being sarcastic itself.
Go ahead mod me down for being off topic, just when I was was feeling good about my 2 point karma.
Re:Who wants to pay for Napster? (Score:2)
While appreciating the humor, actually I convert all my CDs into digital form and store them on my computer because:
Re:Who wants to pay for Napster? (Score:2)
Like radio (which is also a hassle to use as a piracy tool), record companies can vie for "airplay", but with a legal payola scheme. The Industry can use the New Napster to plug their albums, maybe only releasing selected singles, and pay for the privelege. Just like MTV, but with computers.
The hard-core music fan, or the mildly computer-savvy music fan is going to snort at a service like this, but Middle America might give it a shot (a la AOL). I mean, it's free, right? Napster, Inc. can charge the record co.'s per download of a given song (an "insertion" if you will, pun intended), and balance its books. Fans can try before they buy for free. Hooray, I win!
Bravo Napster! (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you do?
Shut it down and die, or change it and try and make a buck?
We were one of the first labels to support Napster in public. And whatever they decide to do in the future, they have unleashed an idea that has changed everything, and for that, we as a label and as artists say "thank you".
Its up to anyone who does not like the new Napster to take the many free tools that are out there and create something new that is exactly what the public wants.
Be prepared however, to be vilified, persecuted draged through the courts or worst of all ignored, but whatever you do, dont complain.
Re:Bravo Napster! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bravo Napster! (Score:2)
Any moment now, that Fanning kid is going to pull an Enron, and we can all laugh and point at his investors together. *warm fuzzy*
-grendel drago
Re:Bravo Napster! (Score:2)
(I didn't sense any sarcasm in your post.)
--
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?
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.
Re:Napster, napster, napster... (Score:2, Insightful)
Coincidence? I think not.
I think it is a coincidence for the most part.
I would suggest (hey, just one opinion) that the real reason record sales have plunged is the "boy-band" pop phenomenon. As can be expected, sales explode initially with boy bands (think mid/late-80's) and then plunge as the vanilla music gets tiring. Its a fad. Eventually something comes around and sales go up (like Nirvana). Music sells in cycles. Right now, we're on the downside of a cycle. It will pick up again regardless of Napster at some point.
Re:Napster, napster, napster... (Score:2, Insightful)
You also need to consider the timing, ie, dot-com boom and bust. Back when people were making money hand over fist, there was a little more room for CDs in the budget. Now with layoffs making the news each day, entertainment dollars take a hit.
Re:Napster, napster, napster... (Score:5, Insightful)
Napster is King of the World!
Dot-com boom
People rolling in money
"New Economy"
The "business cycle" is dead
People buying many CDs
The past six months:
Napster is in third-class cargo
Dot-com bust
People getting laid-off in recession
Same old Economy
The business cycle isn't quite dead
People aren't buying as many CDs.
Correlation does not always mean Causation. I personally think that Napster is indicative, not causative, of music sales.
Re:Napster, napster, napster... (Score:2)
During Napster's heyday, someone figured out that "The Offspring" were the most pirated band on the net. The band embraced the title, even selling Napster t-shirts on their website (until, not without some irony, napster sent them a cease and desist letter). The band's album sold far more copies than expected (the percentage increase in sales was much more than the average band, indicating that there was an effect beyond the strong economy), their concerts sold out and they got far more air/mtv play.
This only indicates that p2p distribution might help record sales during a strong economy (it says nothing about how it might affect music sales during a down economy tho). However, it does indicate that p2p distribution might have some positive affect on music sales.
Re:Napster, napster, napster... (Score:2, Informative)
and there was a
Re:Napster, napster, napster... (Score:5, Insightful)
How are people exposed to new music? Up until a few years ago, the answer was that they heard new songs on the Radio. When Napster came along, that changed for a lot of people. Instead of listening to the same handful of corporate-pumped songs interspersed with commercials, many, many people went to their computer to find new music. Now that Napster is essentially gone, the recording industry has, in effect, severed the only remaining advertising link between their product, and an entire generation of college-age customers.
Now that people have less free money, they aren't buying as many CDs, and record sales are back down.
That's one theory, but consider this. In times of recession, people are more likely to spend money on less expensive luxuries. You may not be able to afford that SUV or plasma TV now, but you can probably afford a reasonably priced dinner out, or a couple of tickets to Lord Of The Rings, or a cup of gourmet coffee from Starbucks, or a CD by a new band.
Traditionally, music sales and movie theatres do good business during hard economic times. During the Great Depression, the movie industry made enough money to finance the construction of whole chains of movie palaces the likes of which we'll never see again! Right now, the movie industry is in an enormous boom -- movies right now are making hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. Why is it that people are perfectly willing to spend $9.50 to see a movie once, but don't want to spend $15.00 for a CD that they can keep? The music industry is in the middle of an enormous market failure, and that market failure strongly correlates to the shutdown of Napster. In a bad economy, the music industry should be making money hand over fist. The fact that sales are collapsing is a red flag that they're doing something horribly, horribly wrong.
Napster's rise and fall happened to coincide with the CD sales spike because the Napster phenomenon was tied to the 'net explosion and subsequent implosion, which were driving the economic train that influenced the CD sales bump.
Theory: Napster created a demand for bandwidth, and the destruction of Napster ruined the market for broadband. What's the point of buying DSL if there's nothing to download? I believe that the shutdown of Napster sent shock waves rippling through the economy that significantly contributed to the current recession. This wasn't something that happened in a vacuum. The shutdown of Napster eliminated a major incentive for consumers to upgrade their internet service, and their computers as well. A lot of things have gone wrong in the tech sector in the last few years, but there's probably nothing that did more to squelch the demand for broadband then the elimination of the only compelling internet service that required significant bandwidth!
Again, I have a lot of respect for people who heard a tune on Napster and went out and bought the album - the recording industry doesn't deserve you guys. But I think that for every principled music listener like that, there were probably five people in their dorm rooms or at home in high school who were just amassing free music because it was cheap and there.
I'll suggest that using Napster to amass music only makes economic sense if you're a broke college student sitting on free bandwidth. Otherwise, it's a complete waste of time and energy, and people eventually figure that out.
Time is money. At any given time, any given individual rarely has both. If you're a young college student, you generally have lots of free time, and very little disposible income. The situation completely changes once you leave school and join the workforce. Once you have a job, suddenly you have disposible income, and very little free time.
What's the "cost" of downloading a "free" album from Napster? Well, you've got to find all of the album tracks, then download them, then re-download all the ones that were corrupted or timed out. Then, assuming that you're really trying to displace a CD purchase, you'll spend time uncompressing the songs, and burning a CD. Finally, you'll probably want to make up a CD label. And, you're running up your modem bill, unless you have broadband. How long did that take you, from beginning to end? Let's say that it took you three hours, from beginning to finished "product." What was the "cost" of this free album? The answer is the cost of the authentic product divided by the amount of time it took you to make the bootleg product.
$15.00 / 3 hours = 3 hours work at $5.00 per hour
In exchange for working for three hours at sub-minimum wage, you now have a product, inferior in every way, to something you could have just purchased in the store for $15.00. That makes no economic sense whatsoever
... unless you're a college student who has free time but no money, in which case you aren't really a potential current customer anyway, because you can't afford the product!
Had you just stopped at the record store and bought the album, you could have come home, put your new album on the stereo, read through the pretty liner notes, and had a nice piece of art to add to your music collection. Hell, if you really wanted the music in MP3 format, it's a hell of a lot cheaper -- and more reliable -- to buy the CD and rip it yourself.
For someone with any amount of disposible income, the only rational use of Napster is as a music sampling/finding tool.
But what about all those college students who spent all that time amassing huge MP3 collections?
They are the next generation of music collectors! If someone spends hours collecting thousands of hours of music, they're learning to love music and learning to want to collect it. They are probably more likely, once they have disposible income and lose their disposible time, to want to continue their "habit" -- only once they enter the workforce it becomes much more economical for them to feed their "habit" with store-bought CDs!
In effect, when the music industry sets out to trash MP3 collectors, they are trashing their own best future customers! If the music industry succeeds in driving college students away from music collecting, then those college students will find something else to spend their college free-time, and later, their workplace free-income on.
Even if Napster raised their sales, it was also uncontrollable by them, and these guys are all about control.
Exactly! The music industry is all about control. The only reason that the recording companies are able to sign musicians to one-sided rip-off contracts is because they have a virtual monopoly over every aspect of the music market. Take that monopoly away, and the recording industry has no value to artists. The effort to shut down, then cripple Napster, serves one purpose -- to re-consolidate control over what music Americans are exposed to.
This battle is all about control.
Re:Napster, napster, napster... (Score:2)
Good point. I look at my 4-5 years' worth of MP3-collecting (and I'd gladly have paid $0.50-1.00 per track in that collection), and realized that by trying so hard to get everything, RIAA wound up with nothing.
Re:Napster, napster, napster... (Score:2)
this will not work. (Score:3, Insightful)
UNLESS
Some big phat cie (ie AOL Time-Warner Microsoft etc) includes a big link on a portal and gets ol' granpa to subscribe.
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.
Re:RIAA loves this. (Score:2)
Is that spin? Or is that reality?
My understanding was that it wasn't spin, for the majority of Napster users. Guess we'll find out.
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.
Re:RIAA loves this. (Score:2)
Does anyone know what the average consumer spends on CDs/mo.? I don't, but I'm willing to bet it's not $14.95. More like $5.95. If The Industry would stop worrying about people downloading 10GB of music for free (there's only 24hrs. in a day to listen to music anyway), and concentrated on the cost savings of completely eliminating distribution, it could make a fortune. Who cares if a user is hoarding music, if you don't actually have to pay anything to get it to them? Yeah, bandwidth, sure, but just throttle it, and buy it in bulk. I wouldn't mind waiting overnight to download 200+ songs!
Allow artists to tap into that $14.95/mo based on how often their song(s) is (are) downloaded.
Broadband (Score:4, Insightful)
It has all been said before, and will be said again about introducing a new format. Which is totally right, who is going to want a hard drive full of .nap files ?
But I just had a thought, in Napster's heyday (isn't it scary that last year is already "heyday"), broadband was a lot more prevalent. Now, we have seen boradband companies die, as well as a lot of people losing their jobs and either being off the net (doubtful) or switching to dial up. I couldn't help but wonder how many people are left that will want to sit there on a 56k line and download .nap files.
just a thought...
Re:Broadband (Score:2)
I would be really, really (really) surprised if considerably more people don't have real internet access now, compared to last year, or two years ago.
Re:Broadband (Score:2)
trust me... if you hang out enough in IRC, you'd be amazed what people manage with jsut a 56K dialup connection...
mudic videos, full length movies, you name it.
hell, there were even people running FILESERVERS from their dialups...
I'm tellin' ya... you don't know hell until you find this mecca of perfect, rare, LARGE files, only to find out that you're #50 in the cue, and the max download rate is 2K/sec.
Re:Broadband (Score:2)
Of course someone will likely have a
Failed (Score:2)
Napster is not news anymore. (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps the next rev of Slashcode will allow users to define their own kill filters for headlines?
A Necessary Evil? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is it that every time a company comes around and decides to charge money for a product, tens of thousands of ninnies decide that it's suddenly no longer 'worth it'? I'll tell you why. It's because they're poor.
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.
Re:Will this be cracked? (Score:3, Funny)
That's an interesting idea. After that file has been share a few million times, the download will fly! 100:1 compression eat your heart out.
NOPE your wrong (Score:2, Informative)
Of course, I'm also pretty sure the hackers will learn the .nap format, find out a way to save incomplete files, and decode/play the file themselves;)
History teaches us that only time will tell.
Leech Zmodem (Score:3, Interesting)
Designed to fail ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lesse:
A Proprietary Format - So, I can't just deposit MP3s on a CD and have hours of listening delight? That sucks. I'm paying to get music and I get a lame-ass proprietary crap format that can't be read by anything but Napster's own player. That alone is enough to keep me from paying.
Content is slim - Apparently, the record companies get to pick what is distrubuted. They'll distribute the same crap that plays on the radio, and probably at the same crappy quality. You're better off routing your radio receiver to your soundcard, and you can do that for free!
Do I really want to pay a monthly fee for limited content in a proprietary format? Of course not. This is just a clever way for the RIAA to get it to fail so they can come back and say, "See, we told you so, It wouldn't work. They just want to 'steal' the music, and not obtain it legitmiately."
I'm dissapointed. I was one of the first to say I would pay to download music in MP3 (not proprietary) format, just so long as I can get what I want. It's potentially a great service that I think some people are willing to pay for, less than a dollar per track, and you get what you like! It's perfect. Or, at least it could have been. Now it's just the bastard child of the RIAA.
Re:Designed to fail ... (Score:2)
More to the point -- that alone is enough to keep me from using. Even if .nap were free as in beer, I wouldn't bother.
Anyone got portable devices that play Liquid Audio? Oggs? .NAPs? Anyone? Bueller?
Ummm... (Score:2)
Call me stupid, if you wish, but I just don't get it.
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.
So you're looking for something like . . . (Score:2)
I know other people have mentioned it in this discussion - but it bears repeating. This is a fantastic service - you get unlimited downloads of the mp3's stored on Emusic servers (and ripped by Emusic, so you know it will be good quality) for ~$10/month, and the artists get paid.
HitchHiker's Guide To Napster Review. (Score:5, Funny)
We've reviewed the 5000-word review at "http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/paynapste r.html", and, well, seeing as how there are a hundred billion other P2P file-sharing applications in the Galaxy (and at least a hundred on Earth alone), and only a limited amount of space in the book's database, we've had to trim it a bit.
"Sucks ass"
Who do independent artists sue? (Score:4, Insightful)
Common sentiment... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm going to be paying a monthly fee for Napster, I'll be expecting a certain level of performance from the service; even if I'm only paying $4.95/month, that's $60/year that I -- a poor college student and a member of the target demographic -- won't have any more. I'm going to expect Napster to deliver, and I don't think it is going to be able to meet my expectations.
The first thing I'm going to expect is constant uptime. The old Napster delivered this perfectly; I don't think I ever got a "cannot connect" message from Napster. However, even though I could always get on, the selection of files was hardly constant: at times I would go on and have millions of files at my finger tips, from thousands of users; other times I'd find a few hundred users with perhaps half a million files.
This is significant because of my second expectation: redundancy. When I search for a file, I will expect to have at least 20 different copies of the song to choose from -- thus enabling me to download the song even if the first 15 users give me the busy signal. I want to be able to download the same song (down to the bit) from no less than 20 locations; the more, the merrier.
This is part of another expectation I have: quality files. I don't want to download a copy of Nirvana's _Smells Like Teen Spirit_ only to find that I downloaded a 128kbit song that's missing the last 5 seconds -- the last 5 seconds might only be fade-time, but it's the principle of the thing. What if I wanted to download a song that goes straight to the last second with no fade-time? I want only complete songs, at nothing less than 256kbit encoding. People on 56k modems might settle for 128kbit (I always settled for 160kbit) but I have faster-than-god 'net access at school, and I'm planning on using it.
My fourth expectation is speed; I want to be able to download all of my files at no less than 200k/second. I don't care how Napster pulls it off, it's what I'm expecting (my basis for these expectations follows shortly). I expect that kind of speed at all times; 100k/second is acceptable at peak usage, say 6pm - 9pm, but at all other times I damn well better be seeing 200k/second.
My fifth expectation is to be able to download songs the day they are released on CD. I will expect to have nearly immediate access to all new music that hits the market. If there are going to be delays between release dates and availability on Napster, they won't be getting my patronage. If there are going to be certain bands/lables that I can't download on Napster, I want to know about it BEFORE I sign up; I want it spelled out for me in BIG, BOLD, AOL FRIENDLY LETTERING. I want to see a sign that says "these bands will be inaccessable to you: ------ ".
For my sixth and final expectation, I expect to be able to burn these songs onto any CD any number of times at full quality. Period. No exceptions. No DRM bullocks. I expect this to work this way.
I don't think these expectations are unreasonable. Here's why: this is no different from what I can do now.
At any given time, day or night, peak usage or not, all of the above expectations are met by the various file sharing programs I use. I can't always get a complete copy of whatever song I want on the first try, but I can download seven different versions of the same song in just 10 minutes to make sure I got my 256kbit, COMPLETE, error-free copy of said song. I can get these songs the date they are released (sometimes several days/weeks before). I can burn them onto 10000 CDs if I feel like it, at full quality, and no one will think twice. I can almost always find a host that'll give me 200k/second or higher (I get max out between 400 - 700k/second on gnutella, because my school has the fattest pipe I've ever SEEN). If any of these things aren't available to me under my current setup, that's fine; I'm not paying for any of it. But Napster wants my money, so they damn well better deliver. If I can't get something AS GOOD as what I have now, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing and Napster will be $5/month poorer because of it.
I want to be legal about my downloading (not that I'm downloading anything illegally, of course
(Just don't get me started about LEECHES on the new Napster
~A.
Re:Common sentiment... (Score:2)
No, you're just a bad budgeter -- which was the original poster's point -- college students spend money more freely than any other demographic, so complaining you don't have the money just doesn't work.
Marketing folks know exactly how much the average college student spend on things, regardless of how much debt they'll have to start repaying a few years from now. Right now you don't have loan payments...
Let me get this right: (Score:4, Insightful)
tickets (Score:2)
Zeropaid.com (Score:2, Informative)
could be good (Score:2)
I was thinking Napster was dead and gone but I'm starting to think they might be on to something, especially since it looks like MP3.com is losing its luster.
The service should allow artists to choose if they want the "secure" wrapper or plain MP3s, and/or the wrapper should be easy to remove (the way Fanning keeps talking about it the wrapper makes me think it will be).
The system should allow you to identify rips before you download them (ie, there should be "official" rips for each song, preferably at a few different qualities, and that should get passed around, rather than every dork sharing their own "version" of the track full of skips and dropouts and bad encoding).
And there should be plenty of tools for learning about new music, and ways for artists to promote themselves (hopefully not ending up with big guys shutting out little guys).
I think might actually turn out pretty good, especially for indie artists looking for distribution. Better than having to set up your own website and pay for bandwidth, and you might get a few bucks. Just tell people, my new track is up on Napster, check it out.
The Napster brand is pretty strong too, in fact I still use the term "Napster" even if I'm actually using another service.. like, didja Napster the new Boards of Canada [boardsofcanada.com] album yet?
where's my 2 dollars? (Score:2)
"Hello, McFly!"
They want to charge fine, but I should get something everytime someone uses MY bandwidth and my system to get the content napster is charging for.
We knoe they'll fail, they know they'll fail, there just making as much bank as possible so they can go cry in there million dollar homes.
I am think I should write a script that detects when 99% of a song is downloaded, then terminate the download. Pretty soon everyone will be padding there music a little, and people will be paying for ulimited downloads. Unless its 2 dollars or less per month, they'll fail even with unlimited downloads.
Who wants to start a pool? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who wants to start a pool? (Score:2)
Check out Total Recorder [highcriteria.com].
Re:Who wants to start a pool? (Score:2)
It' s like (Score:2, Funny)
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...
Why should someone pay to donate their bandwidth (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean if you are stupid enough to pay to give bandwidth and harddrive space you are stupid.
Maybe if Napster were more like an mp3.com or CDnow it would work
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.
Missed the boat, completely. (Score:2)
I'm afraid the author missed the boat completely with a fundamental assumption. The client comes with "limited reach", that is you don't hit every server on the network, just a reasonable number of local servers. The author then just decides that this is bad, and that users will want to contact all servers for every query.
That would be a bad idea.
In fact, the user doesn't care if they can contact all the servers, they only care that they can contact a single server with the song that they want. One user shares a song with 5 people, who share with 5 people (25 + 5 = 30), who share with 5 people (125 + 30 = 180) who share with 5 people, (625 + 180 = 805), who each share with 5 people (3125 + 805 = 3930). Well, look at that, nearly 4000 people had the song, and each user only had to talk to 6 other servers (one to download, 5 to send).
If every user had to talk to every other user there would be no way for the system to survive. The key to scaling is to distribute the content, which means you don't need to hit every server . Of course, this doesn't mean the system will survive, but I believe the observed real world is a teeny fraction of what this paper puts forth as reality.
Not forgetting the 'laziness' factor (Score:2)
So Napster went down and people *had* to use alternatives. These are now very good and people are comfortable with using their new software (be it AudioGalaxy, Bearshare, DirectConnect, etc). Even if Napster had all its original content and didn't use the doomed proprietry format it would still need something extra to make people move from the software they are now comfortable with (eg the promise of X TB of cached music with low hit count so numerous tracks do not become invisible when one person switches off their machine). Certainly its glory days are over.
Phillip.
50 tracks a month??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:50 tracks a month??? (Score:2)
If you truly want to support your favorite band... (Score:2, Informative)
Getting it right (Score:2)
1) You register for the service (for free)
2) The service provides a wide range of music
3) Music is priced reasonably: say $1 / song.
4) The music DB is accurate, up to date, and searchable by band, performer, genre, date, etc.
5) Subscriber reviews are provided (like Amazon) and moderated (like Slashdot). You can search for music based on review content and subscriber ratings of music.
6) Music is provided in the format of your choice: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, etc.
7) Your purchase is registered with the site; once you've purchased and downloaded a song, you can download it at a later date in a different format or encoding at no additional charge.
8) You get to preview a song (listen to the first 30 seconds or so) for free.
9) You are free to play the song on any device; your computer, your CD player, your DVD, or your toaster.
10) You may burn the song onto CD's or any other devices for you own use.
11) The site provides services for music fans (e.g. marketing): info on bands, event schedules, interviews, on-line chats with bands, etc.
12) In exchange for the above, the subscriber agrees not to re-sell / re-distribute purchased songs.
This would be win-win. The labels would make money, the bands would make money and get exposure, customers would benefit. Too bad that it'll never happen.
Re:Getting it right (Score:2)
The real story (Score:3, Insightful)
People will refuse to pay for this; not because of a refusal to pay for content, but a refusal to pay for such limited, proprietary content. That won't stop the RIAA from pointing to the failed pay Napster business model and claiming it supports their claims that only music "pirates" used Napster.
Then they'll jack up CD prices a little more. All in a day's work.
-Legion
Re:.nap encrypted? why bother? (Score:2, Informative)
News Flash, the DMCA does apply overseas, if they have a treaty with the US. remember that whole DeCss thing in Norway?
Of course if you don't sign the treaty, your a terrorist, but I digress.
Plau as a CEO not only have your protested your companine property, you have a way to go after people who you believe is taking all that money away.
Re:Napster's big chance (Score:2)
Re:I hate to say it ... (Score:2)