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Napster Introduces Subscription Charge
Simon Cozens writes "The BBC is reporting that Napster is introducing a subscription charge to pay off the music industry. " And the real question is what percentage of
Napster users will shell out the clams vs moving to OpenNap or Gnutella.
Funny, I just got this news item through a wormhole in the space-time
continuum:
NAPSTER SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE GOES LIVE
June 16th, 2001
Further to CEO Hank Barry's predictions earlier this year, Napster Inc. (a
wholly-owned subsidiary of TimeWarner-AOL-Bertelsmann-Universal) started
charging users to log onto their popular file sharing service. Since its
launch in 1998, 60 million users have created accounts.
The new subscription-based service, which entirely replaces the previously
free version of Napster, was launched at midnight last night. For a mere ten
dollars a month, users are given unlimited access to the Napster service and
the shared files of other users.
In the 18 hours since the launch, three users have subscribed. One of them,
"br1tneyD00D", was quoted earlier as saying "ne1 got nud brit pics...
thanks... and what is this opennap thing that every1 talks about".
Asked if he was worried by the sudden drop in Napster usage, Mr Barry
replied "See this desk? Real mahogany. Yours for two hundred bucks. Really,
you can walk out with it now. Okay, one hundred, but you're twisting my
arm."
-- Yoz
This, I have to say, is a novel concept; paying a middle man when there (technically) isn't one.
If Alice wants to download a Metallica tune from Bob, I don't really see them shelling out the $$$ for Napster. But if Alice would be free to download the same tunes from reliable, comprehensive and fast Napster MP3 archives, the story might be different. Is Napster just dumping the whole P2P concept and beginning the transformation into plain vanilla MP3 distributor?
Marko Karppinen
Has anyone heard anything relating to price? I mean, we all knew a subscription fee was coming, so this news is really no surprise. But I want to know how much they plan to charge.
On top of that, are they going to lock out systems like OpenNap? There are a few servers that have at least as many songs as the official servers, so won't everyone just start using those?
First off, I'm not one of the guys that downloads songs just to have them...I download songs that I already own, and the very occasional single that I wouldn't buy in a store.
There is no way that I'm going to pay twice for songs that I've purchased legally already. I am all for supporting the artists, but not twice.
My $0.02
-Ben
Say what you mean, mean what you say! But please know what #$@% you are talking about!
I know I should have finished filling up that second harddrive last week!!!
Anyway, I haven't been using gnutella because it is slower, less reliable and seems to have less of a selection. But as soon as Napster goes to pay, it's probably going to have more of a selection, leading more people to use it, leading more people to use it, until nobody cares about NApster anymore anyway.
BTW, get a gnutella program here... freepeer's bearshare program
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
At the moment, I expect nothing from Napster; if a song cuts out in mid-download it is a pain, but as I'm going to be getting the track for free, I don't mind spending a bit more time getting the track later on. Once money gets involved (and I have no qualm about paying a monthly/yearly fee in order for access to a music catalogue), I (and I'm sure others) will expect a much better quality of servers. And I'm also feeling a bit uneasy about the fact that Napster's current line of defence (being a common carrier) doesn't quite suit once they start charging for the service. After all, it's the people who use Napster who make it valuable, not the server setup. Anyway, we shall see...
Ok, so Napster plans to charge for use.
How's it planning to distribute the spoils? It surely won't be using the ID tags? Naah, it'll just heft over a wedge to the recording companies.
They'll get richer and not one artist will receive a penny.
--
"I do not speak for my employers, though they are controlled from my Teddy's huge pulsating brain."
Does this move ammount to sanctioning of Napster by the music industry ala the DAT tax.
I have no desire to rip off the music industry or the artists, who IMO have every right to charge whatever the heck the like for CDs (as I have every right to buy them or not buy them at a given price... it's not like we're talking about essentials of life here).
I'd actually prefer that the music indstry just get its act together and start a subscription based music download service. Maybe $30/month for unlimited downloads, or something like that. If the quality was good enough (ie, MUCH better than MP3), and if other goodies like cover art, etc were also downloadable, I'd sign up in a minute. Even at that price, it would save me a ton of money over what I spend now on CDs.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Some kind of CRC check for legitimacy could also be added, so I know the copy of Rush's "Tom Sawyer"(*) L33tD00d has is the same as the original and not some horribly recorded-from-tape version.
Also, I want discounts (preferrably up to 100% depending on collection size) for people who put songs up as opposed to download-only people.
(*)I don't know which megacorp owns Rush. If it isn't Bertelsmann, what the heck, you understood the general scheme.
As much as I love (and use) the opennap servers, they are not a viable alternative to commercial napster. The servers have limited load, for one, and the (commercial) Napster users DON'T KNOW ABOUT IT. A friend of mine was recently banned by Metallica because she had a song titled "Metallica-Sucks.MP3"
She didn't know what to do, because her IP dosn't change, and she couldn't get around the block. I asked her if she tried Napigator or any of the alternatives. Her response? "What? You mean that there's more than just napster?"
She's just a typical college student. If the average student dosn't know about the options, who does?
No, the typical Slashdotter dosn't count on this one.
---
Desperation is a stinky cologne
And the real question is what percentage of Napster users will shell out the clams vs moving to OpenNap or Gnutella.
Of course, this is assuming that most Napster users even know about OpenNap or Gnutella. I know that at least 95% of my computer literate friends have never even heard of either one of them, and the ones that do are the active *nix users, not the casual MS Office users.
If 90% of Napster's clients come from Joe and Jill Schmoe using AOL, who don't know A) what the alternatives are or B) where to get them, than Napster has a pretty good racket going. Hook 'em by giving it away, then start charging later. They probably would have had to go to a subscription basis sooner or later, just to turn a profit, music industry lawsuits or no.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
The music industry is okay with this? Don't the have any idea how consumers think?
Right now I use Napster to explore new music, and I usually end up buying CDs of the stuff I like. But if I have to pay for the service, suddenly I'm interested in "getting my money's worth". Now I'll want to use Napster more often because I'm paying for it. In addition, I'm not going to want to buy CD's. Why? Because I already paid for the music once. Why would I want to pay again?
No one really knows how much Napster actually helped the sale of CDs. But whatever it is, after fees it'll probably go down.
I wonder if there's anyone who'll START using Napster because of the fees? Perhaps they'll be more comfortable now that it seems more legal...
JWho moderates the meta-moderators?
Maybe someone didn't think this all the way through...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Oh, you're so ELITE!
Shit. Back in the days when I was trading C64 games I realized that counting the "warez" doesn't work. Give all you've got out freely and you'll get everything for free.
When the stuff you trade flows freely, everybody benefits. Yeah, there are unavoidable freeloaders but most traders will appreciate you for sharing freely. Can you argue with that?
Bean-counting warez was a bad mistake back then. It's a bad mistake now.
I think a pay service is a fine idea but they are going to have to give you a lot more than the hacked together search engine that they do now. For example, how about:
- Releasing a 1.0 client that looks like a professional application (e.g. doesn't have buttons stretching halfway across the screen) and fixes the dozens of obvious bugs.
- Implementing a sophistocated search engine that goes beyond simple keyword searches. It DESPERATELY needs boolean operators and making the Artist and # of results fileds work would be nice too.
- Searching across ALL of their servers regardless of which one you log on to. You may not have noticed, but right now searches only hit users on the same server as you so you never get more than a fraction of Napster content at one time.
Now that Napster actually has a business model I think it's about time that they replaced Shawn Fanning's amateur project with a professional quality application.Does anyone remember the AOL lawsuits from a few years back? People sued because they got busy signals trying to dial up -- they felt that by not being able to connect, they weren't getting what they were paying for.
As soon as Napster goes subscription (and hence becomes a legitimate business in the eyes of averagejoeschmo@aol.com), you can count on a huge increase in the proportion of modem users. While curious average users will sign up in droves, college students with high speed access will avoid the charges by using other methods of file transfer among their friends, e.g. ICQ, IM, FTP, file-sharing, etc.
And you can also bet that complaints from modem users will skyrocket: people can't connect to the servers, can't find the songs they want, downloads are too slow, high-speed users keep disconnecting them, etc.
Right now, a large percentage of Napster files come from college students (witness the huge drop in files over winter break), and since modem users don't have to pay for the service, they don't have any legitimate cause for complaint. But as soon as they're in the vast majority and are shelling out a monthly fee, modem users will expect a certain level of service. Unless Napster can deliver it, they had better be prepared for a barrage of lawsuits.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
The majority of MP3s floating out there were done by the clueless who :
used Line-In instead of DAC
If they DACed, they used a Crappy CD/CDRom (Jitter-bug is a dance, not an CDROM "feature")
Encode at 128k at the worst possible setting
Couldn't ID3 tag if their life depended on it
And don't get me started on incomplete, unverified, mislabeled songs...
It's like paying for a really bad tape of an FM broadcasted song.
---
Well, there weren't any details on how the subscription service would be set up, but one would hope it would be some flat rate for unlimited downloads. $10 - $15 would be reasonable for that kind of access, though I can already imagine the fr33 muzIk kiddi3z already kvetching about how "music should be free." As in beer, of course; some (not all, but some I'm sure) couldn't care less if the actual artists are free as in speech - for such an example see, Offspring, latest CD, Sony, controversy.
The article implied the artists would get paid royalties. In a perfect system, the artists would be directly paid all of the money, but then, nothing's perfect. I'd like to know how Napster/BMG plans to divide up the royalties. Number of downloads? Number of songs on the network? And what about indie artists who aren't a member of a label that signs on with Napster? What about artists belonging to labels that might still wish to litigate after the service kicks in?
There are still a shitload of unanswered questions, and lots of time in which to answer them.
Let the "last night of Studio 54" feelings begin.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Napster is a relatively simple protocol, with a simple (though now very well-tuned) server backend. It's fast, but it doesn't do anything particularly clever. This is why OpenNap turned up so quickly, and why we don't need to pay for Napster.
Audiogalaxy Satellite, on the other hand, has nearly all its cleverness on the server side. It keeps note of the songs you want and starts downloading them for you when you're around, automatically. It chooses the nearest peer to you automatically. It understands the difference between artists and titles, so you can browse by artist. You can leave the client running on DSL/cable at home while you use the web interface at work to send stuff to it. And loads of other features.
It's very, very cool, and it'll be much harder to clone for the Open Source world. I'd pay for it.
OK, I can see this is all well and good for the big five record companies. But what about the rest of us?
I make my own tracks. Before with Napster I connected and I shared them. Now Napster are going to be charging a fee for me to share my tracks, and furthermore they're going to be making money by charing other people to listen to them! Does this in any way strike anyone as injust??
I'll be emailing Napster to enquire as to exactly how they intend to resolve this issue. If I had money for lawyers, I reckon I might actually have a pretty decent case, because they've set a precedent by paying other artists.
But then of course the question arises: how much are they going to pay everyone? They could, I suppose, pay per search request (they can't tell when someone connects to download at present). But how do you link searches to particular tracks? Filenames are pretty meaningless.
There are a hell of a lot of issues that need to be worked out here.
--
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
How long until after Napster begins this service with all the big labels will it be before they begin the OpenNap Witch Hunt? How long will it be before they claim 'the Napster protocol is proprietary IP and OpenNap is an unlicensed implementation of our IP"???
My god, you'd think a Slashdot reader would be the type to hurl accusations before even knowing the facts... : )
As I understand it, the subscription fee will *only* be for those wishing to use the "deluxe" service of napster, where garanteed quality mp3's will be offered. No, they won't be profitting from your cherished semi-fragment of a Metallica song. The free part of the service will remain as is (although I wouldn't be surprised if they skimped on the search servers for it), while they'll offer good connections and high quality stuff to the people who pay. This has been in the Napster FAQ for months people...
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
I would be prepared to pay for Napster, but in return I would like a defined QoS.
You will always end up finding that the *only* live version of Jimi Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner at Atlanta, in greater than 64kbps (ugh), and that isn't truncated before the last bar finishes its EL34 plate-melting feedback wail, is gonna be coming from the fastest 28.8k connection from a user on a Zimbabwean ISP, where the backbone connection is accomplished with a k56Flex modem on a noisy dial-up line.
And you, with your bidirectional cable, DSL or better, sitting there in front of an Internet connection where you're used to access that's almost as fast as reading stuff off your hard disk, will *still* have to sit there. Smoking cigarette after cigarette, sitting on your hands so that you don't move the mouse and somehow cause Windows to crash, you will each packet to safely make it down the rickety telephone lines from a 486SX-33 running on a portable generator in Africa, all the way across the Atlantic, and finally through all the myriad of hops to your machine.
You lose a packet somewhere along the way. You see the transfer rate drop to 0.00. It stays there for a second, then resumes its blistering fast 0.08kbps. Great. Only 7 more hours of this hell to go through, afraid to touch your computer or any others sharing your Internet connection, lest the fragile connection get broken.
And, of course, it does.
Just as the anodes in the output stages of Jimi's Marshall stacks start to droop and short against the grids, the neighbor of the super-rich guy in the village picks up the telephone. The click on the party line is the click that is heard half a world away: Transfer Error!
Napster is over.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Of course, there is the other side. I collected a lot of our vinyl albums in MP3 for my girlfriend, who is album- rather than song-oriented. Some of her stuff is a tad obscure (Bob Dylan's Royal Albert Hall, or the pirate No Stone Unturned Stones album). You fight those Zimbabwean modems for a week or more, then one day...
vvvvVVVVVVRRRROOOOOMMMMMMMM the first transfer starts, 20kbps, 30kbps, levels out at 50kbps; the second starts, goes straight to 50kbps, the third starts, goes straight to 50kbps, the fourth naturally gets remotely queued but that doesn't matter, you are gripping the armrests and when transfer #1 finishes #2 kicks in, you rightclick #1 and play song, go to the library, take a few samples from different parts of the track, and the last bars are fading sweetly off into nontruncated bliss when you pop back to transfer and transfer #2 is finished and #5 has started, and within 10 minutes you have the entire album. Half an hour later you're popping the CD into the stereo for the female companion to admire. And life is good.
Oh, and while I usually get 800kbps or so ratings from bandwidth meter websites, on Napster I often see exactly the 1.5mbps down and 200kbps up I'm promised by BellSouth for my DSL connection.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]