Slashdot Mirror
Napster To Be Bought?
michael hirschorn wrote to us with an interesting news story that's popped up a couple times. Rumour has it that some major ISPs have been in talks with Napster regarding an accquisition. The reason for the purchase would be to help get more clients - but that's a heckuva lawsuit to step into the middle of.
Ah for those good old bachelor geek-compound days...
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
So Metallica finally wisened up and decided to buy out Napster?
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Before Napster, searching mp3s out sucked. There was Scour, which sucked big time, with many servers listed but unavailable. There were a couple other similar services, and IRC. That was about it. (Unless you lived on campus and had a big network neighborhood.)
Napster was revolutionary because it was the first service that actually worked for the most part, and didn't require hanging out with script kiddies on IRC in mp3 channels. The software sucked at first, but none of the bugs were fatal, they were just annoying things, like windows not redrawing correctly and such.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Haha, I want to believe that, but common sense tells me otherwise.
If Napster went subscription based, a few things could happen:
1. Massive hoarding of mp3s. Right now, you probably only download what you want to hear. If Napster went subscription based, people would just download gigs and gigs of mp3s for a couple months, then cancel the subscription. When you have 10 days of continous non-repeating music on your hard drive, you really don't need much more, you are already stocked more than the playlists of 99% of all radio stations.
2. People simply wouldn't pay it. You can run fserves on IRC, or use an open version of Napster.
3. These are the people that won't pay for music at stores. You really think that they are going to pay to download it, when they can get it for free through other, slightly less convienent means?
Face it, there is no way at all to make money directly from something that can be infinitely copied for free (other than opportunity cost). You can make money from added value, but the only added value of napster over IRC or other peer to peer sharing is the convienence, which in my opinion isn't worth $5 a month to most people.
Besides, this would eliminate Napster's main legal defense, that it is legal to copy music person to person, so long as there is no commercial gain.
And you really think that the artists/labels are going to accept less than 1 cent per song, considering that someone could easily download over 500 mp3s per month?
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
If I was the guys who founded Napster, I'd take $50 million and run, happy in the knowledge that (a) I was rich and (b) I'd made waves in the high-tech world.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
--
It's a
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
An ISP to buy Napster?? Who do they think is downloading all this stuff?? People with modems?? Look at the speed of connections. These ISP's are dreaming. A buyout of Napster, to be bundled with the ISP's services, would guarantee that somebody else would step up to be "the new" non-proprietary Newpster.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I think the only thing that can save Napster from the RIAA boogeyman is a sympathetic Supreme Court.
That still doesn't address 1. Hoarding, and the argument that it would kill Napsters legal defense... and also, how can you realistically expect the RIAA and the artists to split the single penny per song from someone who downloads 500 songs a month. Oh wait, we have to split the penny three ways, Napster needs to stay in business after the VC runs out.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.