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Review of Pay Napster
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."
How much is the service?
www.edonkey2000.com is my p2p of choice! Mucho content!! Mucho servers, nothing centralized! Catch us if you can! :)
Time shifting (record now - watch later) is legal. It's been upheld by the Supreme Court (Sony v. Universal City - Betamax case). So apply the time shifting principal to all media. If I have a friend who owns Shrek, I could watch it with him, or I can record his copy and watch it at a later point (time shifted viewing). I then apply the 'securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors' principal from the US Constitution. The current 'limited Times' is now appoximately 100 years....so I'll dispose of my time shifted material in another 90-100 years. So I'm legally using time shifted recordings for a reasonable and limited period of time. The only qualification is that one of my friends has a copy of something. But I've found plenty of friends. I also us this same principal when I rent a DVD ($1 at Albertson food stores).
The above has all the logical underpinnings of being totally legit, but only the time shifted viewing aspect has been tested at the Supreme court. The 'limit time' period is my interpretation, but I like to see/hear the thoughts from other people. Shoot I'll even read the opinion of the lawyers.
So basically Napster is providing a pay version of this, but there are other avenues, and plenty of them. Think iPods, Lyras, and other small portable and easy to connect storage. I actually stopped using Napster before they died because the connections where a lot slower than dragging and dropping to an external USB drive (I've only had 56k connections). So long Napster, we hardly knew ya).
Religion and science are both 90% crap..but that doesn't negate the other 10%.
" They will last just long enough to spend all the venture money. Nobody will sign up. The major labels have no reason to deal with em, since they hate Napster already, and have already started up their own services with identical (doomed) business model. So it will never be the 'jukebox in the sky' which is the only model that even has a shot at competing with free."
The only pay service I ever see working would be one that charged a monthly fee ($20 or so), and gave you unlimited access (within reason) and used standard formats.
The only model that will succeed is to treat it like a giant radio station. The provider collects the subs, and then parcels out to the rightsholder s agencies, a percentage (ASCAP, BMI, etc). Those agencies then pay the royalties to the artists.
The thing preventing that from happening is that the RIAA record labels wants to bypass ASCAP/BMI and collect the dosh for themselves.
The model I described would eventually lead to the demise of the record labels. Artists wouldn't need them, they'd just have to produce their music, license ASCAP or BMI to collect their royalties for them, upload them somewhere, and collect their share of the money if their stuff is popular (downloaded).
I believe that this would lead to MORE money, not less, being made by artists. Think about it... $20 is on average just a little more than the price of one new CD. Artists, on average, get less than $1 PER CD sold. $20 per subscriber would add up to more money being paid to artists as a result of that spend than if that person bought 5-6 CD's in that month, if we assume that this pay service split the money 50/50 with artists.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance