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."

Comments

Re:What's the point

[billmaly]

www.edonkey2000.com is my p2p of choice! Mucho content!! Mucho servers, nothing centralized! Catch us if you can! :)

Re:Er, lots of added value over free services

[mikethegeek]

" 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.