Preview the New Napster

*ZiggyP0P* writes "Napster has finally released a preview/teaser of their new business model. Seems kind of sad that so much work will be done on something that noone will use. Quite interesting the part about their own file format..."

Comments

Farking link?

[agentZ]

Is there a reason why the link to Napster is going through fark.com?? They don't appear to have anything to do with Napster...

Nobody?

[mlknowle]

That "nobody" will use the new service is a bit of a misstatement; I think that there will be a dedicated, but small user base - certainly, nothing like the huge usage Napster once had, but if they are able to create a subscription model that has a good enough balance between Cost/Hassle and Product that Joe User will choose it over messing about with AudioGalaxy, there will certainly be a user base.

Expect a PR campaign simultaneous to the release painting those who use Napster2 as hip, aware people while those who use others as music pirates.

The PR campaign won't be as scary as the legislative offensive launched to outlaw music trading apps without DRM... Napster and the industry will be on the same side.

In other words, this isn't the end of Napster, not by a long shot. And I suspect that, of all the fee-based services, the one from Napster will be more forgiving than the one that MS puts out.

why use it?

[2MuchC0ffeeMan]

" Why should I pay when I can get it for free somewhere else?

You mean aside from the fact that Napster is the coolest?
Seriously, we know that there will always be a lot of alternatives. Ultimately, the choice will be yours, but we feel that file sharing communities that pay copyright holders and provide simple, useful tools to help you do what you want with your digital music collection are going to prevail. We feel strongly that the value you receive from Napster will make the fee seem insignificant.

yes, the alternatives we've grown the love over the last 6 months just don't compare the the 'quality' that we could get with the satisfaction of making the RIAA much richer than it already is.

It won't fail because it charges money

[Cyberllama]

It will fail for entirely different reasons. Primary amongst them is the fact that plain old mp3 files are all people really want. The hardware players people own play mp3s, the files they already have are mp3s, and and no one likes restrictions on copying their files.

Not that charging a monthly fee won't work against them, it will, but there are still a number of people who would gladly have paid a monthly fee for what napster WAS. What it has/will become is something no one wanted or asked for napster to make.

And the final problem is that by now a solid napster replacement in the form of Morpheus/Kazaa/grokster has come out. Napster waited way too long. They will always have a place in history, but they will never have a place in the future.

Re:It won't fail because it charges money

[Matey-O]

Make this comment for Napster, get modded up as 'Insightful', make the exact same comment on Ogg Vorbis, get modded down as a troll. :)

(Ask me how I know.)

Why Won't Anyone Use It?

[Violet Null]

Two words: .NAP files.

Why should I spend money to get music as files that won't play on my Nomad or Archos Jukebox?

I'm all for giving the artists a cut of the subscription, or on a per-download basis, or what have you, but if it's in this "secure" format then it becomes worthless to me.

Re:Why Won't Anyone Use It?

[Phil Wherry]

I couldn't agree more.

The industry needs to understand a few things.

• People despise copy restrictions. Copy restrictions make it a little more difficult for the amateur thief. They make it lots more difficult for people who want to pay for music but use it in ways that "feel" fair but that don't line up exactly with a narrow-minded view of those in charge of "rights management."
  
  
• Paying for music isn't scary. Pay-per-use or pay-per-download is scary because it's not predictable. So long as the pricing is below some threshold of pain (I'm guessing $15/month but I'm no expert), I suspect that folks will be largely willing to "pay the music bill" rather than simply trade among themselves. I suspect that some system of royalty allocation could be worked out based on number of downloads that would split the monthly fee among the various players.
  
  
• For heaven's sake! Music is an expressive medium - that's why people want to share it! So the for-pay services need to take advantage of that. Just last night I burned an 18-track CD that consists of a mix of music I enjoy. If I were able to upload my playlist to the aforementioned service, a few of my friends might wind up downloading the files and burning the same CD (particularly if the client software made that easy). Artists (and labels) would get paid for their efforts. And it's enabling me to do something I really can't do right now: share a mix CD with friends without the vague nagging feeling that I'm doing some wrong to the very artists whose music I enjoy. I'd pay for that, though I'd still want it to be flat rate.
  
  
• Where's the revenue growth to be found? Ancillary services beyond the basic download-some-music flat-rate service are one option. Flat-rate models will support periodic price increases if the perceived value is there: I'm unlikely to gripe too much if the service goes from $15/month to $17/month in a year's time if I'm finding it valuable.
  

Sure, there's risk involved in doing this. But I'm not sure it's a big risk: the industry really needs to take the leap of faith and understand that when nearly all of the music-listening public thinks that digital rights management, endless restrictions, damaged media, etc. are a bad idea, perhaps they really need to try something new that provides a mutual benefit.

Re:Why Won't Anyone Use It?

[DocSnyder]

Assuming this is the implementation, in order to crack .NAP, you'd need a mechanism of sending your private key along with any .NAP file you send to another user.

That's quite easy:

Hi! How are you?

I send you this file in order to have your advice

See you later. Thanks

Wrong category.

[Tackhead]

Lessee here. The new Napster...

• It costs money.
• It's not MP3.
• It's MP3, but with copy protection wrappers.
• You can only download a certain number of tracks per month.

And last, but not least, from the "new FAQ": "Why should I pay when I can get it for free somewhere else?", the answer is "You mean aside from the fact that Napster is the coolest?"

After I wiped the coffee off my keyboard, I kept reading, and saw "file sharing communities that pay copyright holders and provide simple, useful tools to help you do what you want with your digital music collection are going to prevail."

Well, sure, but the last time I checked, paying for the privilege of being Hilary Rosen's bitch and copy-crippling my MP3s qualified as "what I want to do with my music collection".

I propose that for 2002, all articles concerning RIAA-endorsed music subscription services go under "It's funny. Laugh".

Re:Secure Format?

[Bandman]

How much you want to bet the first person that cracks this secure format lands a 5 year jail sentence and $500,000 to napster?

Maybe that's their business model? A couple of people being caught for DMCA violations, and they've done better than any other DotCom so far. The bastards...it's almost TOO clever...

Hah!

[cr0sh]

It doesn't look like the artists will be paid (from the FAQ):

How is Napster going to stay legal? Will you filter out certain songs, like before?

All the music available through Napster will be legally licensed for sharing in the Napster community. When you make music available for sharing, our system will check to make sure it's licensed to Napster. We're busy getting licenses to music from copyright holders ranging from major to independent labels, so there'll be a lot of great music when we launch -- and we'll continue adding to that body of music.

(Emphasis mine)

So, once again, it looks like both the artists and the users are being screwed.

This solution Napster will be offering would be more palatable in my view if we knew the money was going DIRECTLY to the artists, rather than via the "label"...

The biggest controller of Digital Rights on Earth

[Beautyon]

That is what Napster will become if the new incarnation is widely adopted.

It will act like a massive distributed file converter, changing billions of MP3 files into .nap files, making Napster the number one controller of digital rights on the planet.

SONY made a small attempt at this with thier proprietary format and portable player that would not play MP3s. It came with software to convert your MP3s to thier format. It bombed.

The new Napster a brilliant idea on paper; use everyones bandwidth and existing mp3s to create a billion file pool of locked music upon which royalties must be paid, in a fully automated system.

The record companies save having to host and convert thier catalogues, and have a ready made system for effortlessly controlling billions of files.

Radio stations will then be compelled to play from .nap files so that compliance is 100% in that arena.

Next of course, they will attempt to legislate that all other formats comply with the .nap DRM schema so that the other sharing services can be brought into line.

If we are not careful its "Bye Bye" clean Ogg Vorbis, and any other tool that helps you use and share music the way that you used to.

Lets see who signs up for it. What a story.

Re:Why I'll Use It

[Tim Doran]

What's going to be in place to stop me from claiming I own "Who Let The Dogs Out".

Jeez, I dunno... self-respect perhaps? ;)

So let me get this straight ...

[KelsoLundeen]

One thing I don't understand: why keep harping about "sharing?" As I read this -- the new Napster FAQ -- you no longer share music, right?

You simply connect to Napster, Inc and grab your limited tracks? So this is essentially a crippled version of the "jukebox in the sky" model that everyone has been talking about but no one can implement?

I mean, this is like MP3.com back before they got bitch-slapped by the RIAA, right? When you stored your music in a "locker" and could access it anywhere? (Which remains an interesting idea, although I have no idea how it works now on MP3.com. Last time I checked, all but two of my songs were "locked down" and a pop-up let me know that MP3.com were "working diligently" to restore the music in my locker. Sorta like the same lame rhetoric that Napster has: "We're working as fast as we can to get you MP3s to play on your MP3 player.")

Now, okay, maybe someone can explain this to me. I don't mean this to be a troll or flamebait. I'm actually curious about this: why in the world would I *pay* Napster simply to get a crippled version of (take your pick) Morpheus?

Granted, it's nice to see that artists are going to get paid. But -- again -- maybe I'm missing something here -- but if the RIAA four years had foresight enough to deal with the MP3 onslaught in a shrewd, savvy way, we'd (a) have the great big jukebox in the sky at this point and (b) the artists (at this point) *would* be getting paid.

So by supporting Napster -- or MusicNet or PressPlay -- what I'm essentially doing is two things: (1) paying protection so as not to get fingered by the RIAA and (2) supporting the RIAA in their quest to *litigate* technology out of the marketplace.

This new Napster is "approved" technology where the old technologies are maverick technologies, unapproved, and therefore illegal?

I get the sense that Napster will become some sort of litmus test for the RIAA. It's going to be one of the incubators (MusicNet and PressPlay being the others) to see how profit can be derived from on-line music.

And again, I got no problem with giving artists their fair-share, but I'm very uncomfortable with the RIAA being in the middle.

What I'd like to see is a Napster that takes the RIAA out of the equation. I'd like to be able to give Bob Dylan or whomever my five cent listening fee and know that it's going into Dylan's pockets. I don't want some fat-cat exec skimming 4.5 cents from that nickel in order to support his Lexus habit or the fact that he or she has to pay rent on his overbig house in the Hamptons.

Napster? PressPlay? Forget it.

Re:So let me get this straight ...

[moire_theory]

why in the world would I *pay* Napster simply to get a crippled version of (take your pick) Morpheus?

I've been seeing similar statements frequently in other threads as well. I think this type of statement really exemplifies an odd ethical state-- think about what you're saying. The clear reason is that one choice is illegal, the other legal. With one choice, you are buying intellectual property as agreed upon by the publishers (maybe the creators), and in the other case, you're taking the property without permission. Really, this is similar to saying, "why pay for a newspaper every morning when I can swipe one from the guy on the subway?"

Admittedly, I routinely download copyrighted material, yet I have a clear understanding of the real economics and ethics of what I'm doing. In this scenario, it's not uncommon for me to actually purchase the media and share my own money with the content creators (although I will concede that with music, too much does go to the publishers. Yet this is a different story, and is too frequently confused with MP3 contraversy-- after all, the creators are getting little either way, and even less in the case that the music is redistributed, making it a weak justification in my opinion).

Don't get me wrong; I think Napster's current business model is skewed and overly restrictive, and it will doubtfully work. But the fact that so many users have to ask the question of "why?" expresses a worrying lack of understanding and consideration.

Name-brand versus Free?

[Rayonic]

The general public knows the word "Napster", and that name alone could carry it to success. Yeah, the FastTrack network has gotten huge, and Napster hasn't even been up for a long time, but Napster still has some big name recognition with Joe Public.

I mean, can't anyone think of other cases where people chose an expensive product over a free one? I can think of one or two off the top of my head.

The .NAP format

[Alsee]

I am on the Napster team that created this new Digital Rights Managment file format.

We did extensive research and analysis on all of the available encryptions schemes. We even considered rolling our own. Based on the fact that all client programs would be required to have the decryption algorythm, and at some point the content must be presented to the user, we concluded that security rested entirely within the DMCA.

After reaching this conclusion, we did what any good programmer would have done. We decided not to waste time writing redundant code. We reused an available package. At the insistance of the lawyers, we spent a few minutes customizing the package to be incompatible with the original. The .NAP format is hereby implemented using ROT-14.

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