Napster, Edel Hook Up

mongolian_beef writes "Edel Music AG, an independent European music label, has agreed to distribute music over Napster Inc.'s popular song-swapping service, marking the Internet upstart's biggest deal since it agreed to create a legal version of its service with Bertelsmann AG. Under the terms of the deal, Napster will make songs by popular Edel artists such as Craig David and 2Step available to those of its 50 million registered users who agree to sign up as members for its new fee-based song-swapping service. Financial terms weren't disclosed."

Comments

Why all the B&M on fee-based napster?

[Masem]

Sure, when napster first came out, it was free, could have gotten nearly any song ever made, yada yada yada. But all this meant was that the creators/musicans of the songs never got to see a cent from all that downloading, which I know a good majority felt was wrong (yet some still continued to use napster). Now Napster's going to a *SMALL* fee ($5/mnth is a bargain!) for unlimited, legal access to a good library of music (and hoping to increase it), the musicans will get a cut (abet small), and most people appear to be B&M about this. It really doesn't make sense, though the main reason I'll get to in a bit.

Face it, there were basically only two ways that the Napster and digital music on the net would have worked out: either we get this sort of settlement between the RIAA companies and Napster, or we start the world's largest game of whack-a-mole to remove all illegal music distribution sites on the net (And if you think that freenet or gnutella would offer protection, I very much doubt it, since it would be the operators of the various servers/peers that would be threatened, not necessarily the creators of the program). IMO, the first option of working out a deal is a much better prospect.

I know most of the complaining comes down to money: physical music CDs are too expensive, and early Napster was free. For starving college kids, the choice is easy. But let's say that all the other RIAA companies jump on with BMG and the $5/mnth service continues with lots of sign-upers. At $5/mnth, that's about equal to 3 to 5 CDs a YEAR in terms of price, and I know that's a bargain. Because of that, CD sales might flounder as more people sign on -- on the other hand, CD sales could continue steady or rise if people use Napster to pre-test albums. If the former case occurs, two things would have to happen: either the napster fee would have to be increased (which would cause a lot of people to drop out, and therefore the last possible resort), or the cost of CDs will go down, which is beneficial for everyone, since the music industry appears to be operating right of the supply-demand interestion-- lowering costs will increase sales and increase revenue. If the latter case happens, with increased sales, the only thing that the RIAA people could do is to continue to embrace Napster and possibly lower fees to entice more people to it.

Remember, the boundary right now for most average people is the question of legality of downloading music as such. The fee-based Napster takes away any such threat, and I would expect to see a massive rush of people joining Napster for this service when it's made available.

Napster issues

[mirko]

Yesterday evening and this morning (MET/GMT+1) I filled Napster form in order to get my GPL'd music available for free to the whole Napster Community.
I also use it as a test in order to know whether I can trust them for a more ambitious project.
After clicking the submit button, I got a form to print, to fill and sign and to fax them in order to activate my account.
I tried many times to fax it but their device never answered.
How surprising, my entry was added.
I believe I could have filled the HTML form with Metallica's name and Lars Ulrich as contact.
Of course, I could have easily been caught "la main dans le sac" but there's still a problem, here.
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