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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."
So what are the chances people won't contact eachother and then transfer the music outside napster, through ICQ for example?
I'm going to want CD-quality rips. I don't want to waste 25 of my 50 downloads a month on bad rips.
There are tons of free p2p services out there, admittedly none as good as Napster was in it's day, but free none the less. Maybe you don't get support, but again free. On top of that no limits to how much you download. Most of them offer IM to discuss choices and new music. I am sorry to say it, I was a Huge fan of Napster, but too little way too late.
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
With essentially indistructable services like Gnutella and Kazaa (etc) out there and working just fine (thank-you-very-much), why would anyone in their right mind pay Napster a monthly fee? Those who are going to pirate music are *STILL* going to pirate music. They'll just ditch the Napster client in favour of Napster and Napigator or Kazaa or Gnutella. So, it's 5 seconds longer to find that song you really want? Big deal.
Besides, I've often downloaded a great song and said, "hey, I want more!" And bought the CD.. If I can't find good/new music, buying CD's is something that really wouldn't enter my mind.
Seriously, does anybody expect this pay-for-mp3's thing to take off?
Napster now is like a little animal that got hit by a car but refuses to die. There's blood everywhere, and it just keeps flopping around prolonging the inevitable. They're only bringing shame to themselves at this point. It's pathetic.
Could they just hurry up and die already?
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
The options
1. pay about $10/month for the chance to get 50 tracks, of which 25 actually came through.
2. pay nothing and get a 90% or better rate on downloading tracks.
I think I will take door number 2 please.
Avoid The Rush, Hate OU Early!!!
I worked at Napster for a year.
The only thing I can say is they are getting
what they deserve. Any company that treats people
like napster treated their employees, deserves
to die a slow painful death, what they are doing.
I was the 6th systems administrator in less than 2 years to quit, and apparently 4 have quit since I left. The only ironic part is after I left, they fired the main sources of problems.. their incompetent executive staff.. Their IT manager was fired thank goodness, he was a nepotism hire by their vp of engineering Eddie Kessler, who was also fired.
Let them rot, and let the music be free.
"And how can this be? For he is the
If only there was something like that available...
Before anyone cries "Sell Out" put yourself in Shawns shoes; he has 70 million users, the most famous brand on the net, a once in a lifetime amount of momentum.
What do you do?
Shut it down and die, or change it and try and make a buck?
We were one of the first labels to support Napster in public. And whatever they decide to do in the future, they have unleashed an idea that has changed everything, and for that, we as a label and as artists say "thank you".
Its up to anyone who does not like the new Napster to take the many free tools that are out there and create something new that is exactly what the public wants.
Be prepared however, to be vilified, persecuted draged through the courts or worst of all ignored, but whatever you do, dont complain.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
I believe I read somewhere that during Napster's heyday, cd sales were at an all-time high. After they shut Napster down, I believe I read that cd sales went into the toilet.
Coincidence? I think not.
I'll still continue to download various stuffs, and go out and purchase cds when I find stuff I like. Everyone, including the recording industry, would be a lot happier if they realized what a powerful marketing tool these p2p file sharing dealies are.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
My opinion is that Napster is dead. It is dead not because it is a bad idea, or because we lack the technology, or even because it costs something. No. It is dead because free P2P is still around. And as long as Joe Blow Billie Bob is able to download music and leaves his Gnutella/WinMX/limewire/bearchare/etc (TM) client open and shares-all-his-music-while-using-all-the-bandwith (TM2), napster has no chance to recover it's glory of old.
UNLESS
Some big phat cie (ie AOL Time-Warner Microsoft etc) includes a big link on a portal and gets ol' granpa to subscribe.
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
We all know that this is will spell the end of Napster. Few will use it to begin with, and, finding the bare library will cancel thier service, slimming the pickens even more.
Who in their right mind is going to pay for it to begin with, with so many other File Sharing apps on the Free market?
Am I Over-Moderating??
The spin will be, that the failure of Napster is due to digital music not being accepted by the public in this form, as its only use is to pirate music.
It has all been said before, and will be said again about introducing a new format. Which is totally right, who is going to want a hard drive full of .nap files ?
But I just had a thought, in Napster's heyday (isn't it scary that last year is already "heyday"), broadband was a lot more prevalent. Now, we have seen boradband companies die, as well as a lot of people losing their jobs and either being off the net (doubtful) or switching to dial up. I couldn't help but wonder how many people are left that will want to sit there on a 56k line and download .nap files.
just a thought...
Learn to Improvise
Obviously, its going to fail with the mainstream geek market because of other choices available (Kazaa and similar). Not a bad idea, but it will be the puppets of companies. If I've learned one thing, its that if you pay for something, you'll pay a lot more by being forced to watch various ads (and probably listen to them as well). It will pretty much be like those porn sites you pay for that don't have any content, just popups and banners.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
It has become a parody of itself. I understand that the company had to do this to remain in business, but I don't see why this is newsworthy. The new Napster is a poorly-conceived service that is trying to charge money for a product that is *inferior* to what's being *given away for free* by dozens of other services. Can we please stop talking about it already? It's doomed.
Perhaps the next rev of Slashcode will allow users to define their own kill filters for headlines?
*This page intentionally left pointless*
I for one, enjoy the concept of a new Napster. Yes indeed, the day and age of free music for all is over, but I'm willing to fork over a little bit of cash every month in order to listen to some swell new music. Without Napster, I would have never heard of the Dave Matthews Band. Never would I have been amazed by the sensational pop stylings of Britney Spears. Discovering underground music is what this service is all about, and even if the underground involves money and other less-popular stuff, it's still worth it. Sure, I won't be able to trade from my enormous collection of pristine-sounding 128KB MP3s, but hell, there was a time when you COULDN'T trade music over the Internet. You had to settle for lyrics and tablature, and hum the melodies.
Why is it that every time a company comes around and decides to charge money for a product, tens of thousands of ninnies decide that it's suddenly no longer 'worth it'? I'll tell you why. It's because they're poor.
There is the option, however, to cancel a download mid stream without depleting your download count.
Wasn't there something called "leech zmodem" back in the BBS days? This version of zmodem would abort the download at the very last byte, so as to fool the BBS's upload/download ratio tracking.
I bet something like this will make the rounds when Pay Napster comes online.
Method of processing duck feet
Yep, That's right, The New Napster is destined toward failure, by design.
Lesse:
A Proprietary Format - So, I can't just deposit MP3s on a CD and have hours of listening delight? That sucks. I'm paying to get music and I get a lame-ass proprietary crap format that can't be read by anything but Napster's own player. That alone is enough to keep me from paying.
Content is slim - Apparently, the record companies get to pick what is distrubuted. They'll distribute the same crap that plays on the radio, and probably at the same crappy quality. You're better off routing your radio receiver to your soundcard, and you can do that for free!
Do I really want to pay a monthly fee for limited content in a proprietary format? Of course not. This is just a clever way for the RIAA to get it to fail so they can come back and say, "See, we told you so, It wouldn't work. They just want to 'steal' the music, and not obtain it legitmiately."
I'm dissapointed. I was one of the first to say I would pay to download music in MP3 (not proprietary) format, just so long as I can get what I want. It's potentially a great service that I think some people are willing to pay for, less than a dollar per track, and you get what you like! It's perfect. Or, at least it could have been. Now it's just the bastard child of the RIAA.
The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout
I just don't undersatnd why people can't use better Gnutella clients. Same thing. No restrictions.
Call me stupid, if you wish, but I just don't get it.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Before everyone dismisses the New and Improved(tm) Napster:
Free web content is only free if your time is worth nothing.
Translation: Sure, you can go get all the free bits you want, but the service here is:
1. Quality
2. Access to what you want, when you want
If those can be provided, then perhaps it is worth a small subscription price. There is an incentive (keeping your subscription current) for Napster to provide value. There is no incentive for some random URL to provide value, because without a purchase there is no value by definition.
However, this only holds true if the value difference remains. If Napster starts providing a substandard service, then it won't be worth the money to subscribe.
But I do think they deserve a chance, espeically if they will be offering smaller or new artists an opportunity to distribute their music as well.
We've reviewed the 5000-word review at "http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/paynapste r.html", and, well, seeing as how there are a hundred billion other P2P file-sharing applications in the Galaxy (and at least a hundred on Earth alone), and only a limited amount of space in the book's database, we've had to trim it a bit.
"Sucks ass"
Seriously, if you are an independent artist and your music is on napster your not going to see a dime. The money from Napster is going to the RIAA as a licensing fee for their music being downloaded, but what about you? Are you going to payed for your work? Someone in the gov't needs to look at this a cry foul, because now not only does the RIAA get to profit from their own artists, but anyone who writes something that makes its way onto Napster.
I know this is a common sentiment, but allow me to voice why I won't be subscribing to Napster any time soon:
... it's all backup, of course, of course ... yeah, that's the ticket!), but if Napster isn't going to give me high-quality service, I'll go about my legal compliance by some OTHER method.
... )
If I'm going to be paying a monthly fee for Napster, I'll be expecting a certain level of performance from the service; even if I'm only paying $4.95/month, that's $60/year that I -- a poor college student and a member of the target demographic -- won't have any more. I'm going to expect Napster to deliver, and I don't think it is going to be able to meet my expectations.
The first thing I'm going to expect is constant uptime. The old Napster delivered this perfectly; I don't think I ever got a "cannot connect" message from Napster. However, even though I could always get on, the selection of files was hardly constant: at times I would go on and have millions of files at my finger tips, from thousands of users; other times I'd find a few hundred users with perhaps half a million files.
This is significant because of my second expectation: redundancy. When I search for a file, I will expect to have at least 20 different copies of the song to choose from -- thus enabling me to download the song even if the first 15 users give me the busy signal. I want to be able to download the same song (down to the bit) from no less than 20 locations; the more, the merrier.
This is part of another expectation I have: quality files. I don't want to download a copy of Nirvana's _Smells Like Teen Spirit_ only to find that I downloaded a 128kbit song that's missing the last 5 seconds -- the last 5 seconds might only be fade-time, but it's the principle of the thing. What if I wanted to download a song that goes straight to the last second with no fade-time? I want only complete songs, at nothing less than 256kbit encoding. People on 56k modems might settle for 128kbit (I always settled for 160kbit) but I have faster-than-god 'net access at school, and I'm planning on using it.
My fourth expectation is speed; I want to be able to download all of my files at no less than 200k/second. I don't care how Napster pulls it off, it's what I'm expecting (my basis for these expectations follows shortly). I expect that kind of speed at all times; 100k/second is acceptable at peak usage, say 6pm - 9pm, but at all other times I damn well better be seeing 200k/second.
My fifth expectation is to be able to download songs the day they are released on CD. I will expect to have nearly immediate access to all new music that hits the market. If there are going to be delays between release dates and availability on Napster, they won't be getting my patronage. If there are going to be certain bands/lables that I can't download on Napster, I want to know about it BEFORE I sign up; I want it spelled out for me in BIG, BOLD, AOL FRIENDLY LETTERING. I want to see a sign that says "these bands will be inaccessable to you: ------ ".
For my sixth and final expectation, I expect to be able to burn these songs onto any CD any number of times at full quality. Period. No exceptions. No DRM bullocks. I expect this to work this way.
I don't think these expectations are unreasonable. Here's why: this is no different from what I can do now.
At any given time, day or night, peak usage or not, all of the above expectations are met by the various file sharing programs I use. I can't always get a complete copy of whatever song I want on the first try, but I can download seven different versions of the same song in just 10 minutes to make sure I got my 256kbit, COMPLETE, error-free copy of said song. I can get these songs the date they are released (sometimes several days/weeks before). I can burn them onto 10000 CDs if I feel like it, at full quality, and no one will think twice. I can almost always find a host that'll give me 200k/second or higher (I get max out between 400 - 700k/second on gnutella, because my school has the fattest pipe I've ever SEEN). If any of these things aren't available to me under my current setup, that's fine; I'm not paying for any of it. But Napster wants my money, so they damn well better deliver. If I can't get something AS GOOD as what I have now, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing and Napster will be $5/month poorer because of it.
I want to be legal about my downloading (not that I'm downloading anything illegally, of course
(Just don't get me started about LEECHES on the new Napster
~A.
student of animation and the fine arts
I pay a fee to a (many) third party companie(s) to download files from not any of those companies -- but to another user like me who is in turn paying a fee -- and most of the bandwitdth exchanged is between the two user parties. Is this not akin to setting up a dating service in a nightclub. Or selling the recipe for ice....I mean there are already many, many, many alternative methods of P2P file transfer....This is akin to selling tickets to the game -- after the game....ROFL
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
This whole paying for music that you can't use theory is bogus. Everyone should take a look at http://www.Zeropaid.com. It has everything you need for your p2p needs.
Visit BobtheKing.com it's perhaps the best thing I've ever made to waste your time with.
I was thinking Napster was dead and gone but I'm starting to think they might be on to something, especially since it looks like MP3.com is losing its luster.
The service should allow artists to choose if they want the "secure" wrapper or plain MP3s, and/or the wrapper should be easy to remove (the way Fanning keeps talking about it the wrapper makes me think it will be).
The system should allow you to identify rips before you download them (ie, there should be "official" rips for each song, preferably at a few different qualities, and that should get passed around, rather than every dork sharing their own "version" of the track full of skips and dropouts and bad encoding).
And there should be plenty of tools for learning about new music, and ways for artists to promote themselves (hopefully not ending up with big guys shutting out little guys).
I think might actually turn out pretty good, especially for indie artists looking for distribution. Better than having to set up your own website and pay for bandwidth, and you might get a few bucks. Just tell people, my new track is up on Napster, check it out.
The Napster brand is pretty strong too, in fact I still use the term "Napster" even if I'm actually using another service.. like, didja Napster the new Boards of Canada album yet?
So they want me to pay to use there service, and host content?
"Hello, McFly!"
They want to charge fine, but I should get something everytime someone uses MY bandwidth and my system to get the content napster is charging for.
We knoe they'll fail, they know they'll fail, there just making as much bank as possible so they can go cry in there million dollar homes.
I am think I should write a script that detects when 99% of a song is downloaded, then terminate the download. Pretty soon everyone will be padding there music a little, and people will be paying for ulimited downloads. Unless its 2 dollars or less per month, they'll fail even with unlimited downloads.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
On how many days it takes for nap2mp3.exe to appear on usenet? Hell, I had a activation-free copy of XP Pro about six weeks before it was actually released, I would think the hacker community could knock out a .nap to .mp3 converter over a six-pack.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
Before anyone cries "Sell Out" put yourself in Shawns shoes;
You mean sell your tech to your VC uncle and get subsiquently shafted by him for a few hundred thousand dolars on your million (billion?) dolar idea? Or prance around like an idiot frat boy on MTV, totaly blowing your chance to get the MTV generation to care about copyright law?
Or were you under some sort of impression that Sean Fanning has or ever had any kind of control over napster?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
An Ex-Girlfriend told me once.... "Just Let It Go....its over"
You keep going until you die..."Me".
You know, there are some people out there who actualy create their own music...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It's more like selling tickets to a game where you play.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I can clearly see people killing the download on the last few bytes by clamping down the bandwidth and cutting off the few last bytes in order to save their slots...
+++ath0
I mean if you are stupid enough to pay to give bandwidth and harddrive space you are stupid.
Maybe if Napster were more like an mp3.com or CDnow it would work
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Everyone who says this, in one form or another---"if I could buy tunes at a reasonable price, I would!"---put your money where your mouth is.
eMusic.com exists, and other, similar, services probably do as well.
So, I suppose we'll find out now if all that Slashdotter hot air had any substance. I have a feeling that many of the people who espoused the above sentiment, when given the chance to actually pay for the music, won't give up their gNapster, Morpheus or what-have-you.
-grendel drago
[*toot* celebrating my 350th post, whee!]
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
try here.
its not in english, but they have some very cool stuff!
If they brought back the old Napster (tons of files, MP3, failed downloads, shitty RIPs, lame client) I'd willing pay for it now.
Put if it was pay only, no one would use it, and if nobody uses it, there's no files, etc etc.
because you have taken a aggresive precaution to protect your IP, otherwise you risk loosing your copyright.
News Flash, the DMCA does apply overseas, if they have a treaty with the US. remember that whole DeCss thing in Norway?
Of course if you don't sign the treaty, your a terrorist, but I digress.
Plau as a CEO not only have your protested your companine property, you have a way to go after people who you believe is taking all that money away.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Of course, I'm also pretty sure the hackers will learn the .nap format, find out a way to save incomplete files, and decode/play the file themselves;)
History teaches us that only time will tell.
I know other people have mentioned it in this discussion - but it bears repeating. This is a fantastic service - you get unlimited downloads of the mp3's stored on Emusic servers (and ripped by Emusic, so you know it will be good quality) for ~$10/month, and the artists get paid.
I'm afraid the author missed the boat completely with a fundamental assumption. The client comes with "limited reach", that is you don't hit every server on the network, just a reasonable number of local servers. The author then just decides that this is bad, and that users will want to contact all servers for every query.
That would be a bad idea.
In fact, the user doesn't care if they can contact all the servers, they only care that they can contact a single server with the song that they want. One user shares a song with 5 people, who share with 5 people (25 + 5 = 30), who share with 5 people (125 + 30 = 180) who share with 5 people, (625 + 180 = 805), who each share with 5 people (3125 + 805 = 3930). Well, look at that, nearly 4000 people had the song, and each user only had to talk to 6 other servers (one to download, 5 to send).
If every user had to talk to every other user there would be no way for the system to survive. The key to scaling is to distribute the content, which means you don't need to hit every server . Of course, this doesn't mean the system will survive, but I believe the observed real world is a teeny fraction of what this paper puts forth as reality.
I agree with those that say the new Napster has been designed to fail. But it's not just the fact you can get more tracks and a better service for free from the many alternatives, the 'laziness' factor will also play a large part. The reason Napster became so popular was because it was so easy to use. No more hunting through FTP and web sites, just click and download. This is why it was worth the effort of downloading, installing, and learning how to use. And this is why rivals had a hard time gaining any market share... Napster worked so why try anything else?
So Napster went down and people *had* to use alternatives. These are now very good and people are comfortable with using their new software (be it AudioGalaxy, Bearshare, DirectConnect, etc). Even if Napster had all its original content and didn't use the doomed proprietry format it would still need something extra to make people move from the software they are now comfortable with (eg the promise of X TB of cached music with low hit count so numerous tracks do not become invisible when one person switches off their machine). Certainly its glory days are over.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Oh come on - you could pay the same to http://www.emusic.com and get as much as you can download. Sure, you can't directly interact with the other users, but that's way over-rated since many conversations would beging with "a/s/l?" anyhow.
--- http://foo.ca
I have to agree with this. I *do* have an emusic account ($10/month, unlimited leeching) and I download when and where I want, using no client other than my web browser, so no-one is mooching off me and using my bandwidth that would otherwise be devoted to Counterstrike. I can't see the advantage of Napster over Emusic at all, given the portability issues (.nap!?), the finite catalog and the bandwidth-mooching issues.
Really, I wonder how this saga is going to turn out. I'm more than happy to pay for content, like I do when I buy books, CDs, DVDs and my Emusic subscription. But I like to feel like I have some ownership over the media and can watch/listen when I want, how I want. That seems fair to me. Not being able to, say, copy music files to my Laptop or an mp3 player is like having a book that won't open when I take it on a plane!
Everyone knows that damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. -Pope Pius XI
Then go buy a ticket for their next concert. Even if you can'y go, buy one anyway. I can tell you for a FACT that buying one ticket puts more cash into their pocket then buying a dozen of their CD's. Screw the record labels. Screw Hilary Rosen (oh wait, guys can't do her LOL). Put the money where it belongs..in the pockets of the performers!
IMHO an on-line music service should have the following traits:
1) You register for the service (for free)
2) The service provides a wide range of music
3) Music is priced reasonably: say $1 / song.
4) The music DB is accurate, up to date, and searchable by band, performer, genre, date, etc.
5) Subscriber reviews are provided (like Amazon) and moderated (like Slashdot). You can search for music based on review content and subscriber ratings of music.
6) Music is provided in the format of your choice: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, etc.
7) Your purchase is registered with the site; once you've purchased and downloaded a song, you can download it at a later date in a different format or encoding at no additional charge.
8) You get to preview a song (listen to the first 30 seconds or so) for free.
9) You are free to play the song on any device; your computer, your CD player, your DVD, or your toaster.
10) You may burn the song onto CD's or any other devices for you own use.
11) The site provides services for music fans (e.g. marketing): info on bands, event schedules, interviews, on-line chats with bands, etc.
12) In exchange for the above, the subscriber agrees not to re-sell / re-distribute purchased songs.
This would be win-win. The labels would make money, the bands would make money and get exposure, customers would benefit. Too bad that it'll never happen.
[Insert pithy quote here]
But in order to fucking get on Napster's network you have to pay money. People who are going to rip Napster off are not going to pay money to use their fucking network. Nobody who carried a blue box put a quarter in before they called just so they could not totally rip off the phone company.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Personaly, I think the RIAA should supply the music, in full CDA format, not this lossy mp3 compression. Hell, we are doing all the work for them. Using our network resources, our systems, ripping and compressioning - and sometimes the quality isn't even good for mp3. The only way I will pay money is if it's coming off their NAPSTER servers with NO loss of quality. Why should we grind our fingers and have them reap the benefits.
|
o|oo U RIAA
I'm not sure if it was on leech zmodem or not (I never really used it) but I did have a hacked version of HSLink that took advantage of the fact that the protocol required an ACK to say the whole file had been received, it would ignore this and you would have the file, the BBS would think you didn't and voila...no more ratio problems. :-)
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
I suspect they use some sort of audio fingerprinting, probably in conjuction with more mundane stuff like comparing md5's against a list. I'm not up on this sort of stuff, but I now that there's algorithms that can fingerprint the audio signature of a song with pretty good accuracy (there's some sort of service designed as a winamp plugin to help you tag all your mp3s, too bad I can't remember the name :P)
I didn't sign up, but it's on my radar now. Disappointments: No REM, No Police. However, when I was searching for the Police it gave me "Music Like the Police" which had the following artists:
Men At Work
Madness
Go-Go's
The Fixx
Blondie
I wonder what Sting would think of that.
If it weren't for the selection issue, I would sign up for something like this in a heartbeat. Eventually, the major players will probably consolidate and form a monopoly which will solve the selection problem and impose a price problem. Then, the government will sue them, yada yada yada. So, instead of doing that the messy way, I think we should impose a licensing fee on all MP3 transfers and kick it back to the copyright holder. Yes, it's government intervention, but I don't see any better way.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Eventually, the major players will probably consolidate and form a monopoly which will solve the selection problem and impose a price problem. Then, the government will sue them, yada yada yada
They already have...just look at the RIAA and what it does. I just wish the last part of your statement would come true one of these days.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Why do people say "faster than God"? Hasn't anybody noticed that God is SLOW?
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
I was just pointing out that enjoying rectum does not necessarily equate homosexuality.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
People will refuse to pay for this; not because of a refusal to pay for content, but a refusal to pay for such limited, proprietary content. That won't stop the RIAA from pointing to the failed pay Napster business model and claiming it supports their claims that only music "pirates" used Napster.
Then they'll jack up CD prices a little more. All in a day's work.
-Legion
No, really, how many people read it and actually analysed what it said?
Uh, why should it be remarkable that the pay service should be no worse than the old free one, or any of the many free alternatives now?
The author then contradicts herself by going on to list the negatives, some of which are old, some are clearly New and De-Improved:
And of course, the whole damn point of the thing:
So, we're saying that it works fairly well, only it doesn't really, but that's to be expected because it's all new technology. But it doesn't do anything. It neither shares nor find MP3's or even .NAP's.
The fact that there's anything positive in this (fairly literate) review makes me think that it's been written by a shill. Note:
Perhaps in the early days, but what Napster really achieved was to change attitudes. Napster made it so easy to copy files that it didn't seem wrong to most people. Remember that /. is one of the few places where you'll see people even debating the legality and morality of it. Jane Sharer doesn't even consider it. If it's got a pretty, professional looking client, it must be OK, right? Otherwise The Authorities would put a stop to it, surely.
If the reviewer isn't a shill, she's someone who doesn't realise that a beta should be reviewed as though it is a release candidate, without making allowances for basic lack of functionality (sharing files!) that should have been caught in alpha. One glance at the Kazaa clients should clear that up right away. Filter and search by type, artist, content, sort by file size, bandwidth, download times, user rating, automatic multi-part download from multiple servers at once, pause and resume, search for more servers while you're downloading. My god, if New Napster launches looking like Old Napster, I might as well submit my search requests by snail mail on pieces of papyrus.
If this is the best that anyone has to say about new Napster, they might as well give up pouring more money into it and go buy some stock in manufacturers of blank CD's and flash media, because this is going to tempt nobody away from the Kazaa/Gnutella free-for-all, no matter how many "RIAA Approved!" stickers they slap on it.
Here's why Napster has no chance against Kazaa. I own a bought copy of "Dungeon Keeper 2". Last week, I fancied playing it, but the CD is hidden somewhere among my vast collection. It was - honest to god - easier for me to suck in a ripped version across Kazaa at 500kb/s than to stop what I was doing (developing software), move away from the desktop, find the CD, run the installer (as opposed to unzipping one file), and then have to swap it in and out of the drive simply because the developers assume I'm a thief until I prove otherwise. Is what I did illegal? Probably. Is it immoral? Hardly. Does it make sense? Absolutely!
The paradigm has shifted. It's all about ease of use and personal integrity. I actually do use Fairtunes, and I use it because it's easier than jumping through hoops to get crippled tracks from a label download service, or buying a CD at retail or waiting for one ordered online. Labels deliberately make it hard for us to get or use tracks, because they assume we're thieves, so they have to wrap it all up in (ahem) security. God damn it. If I am a thief, I'm going to rip their pathetic attempts at security right off, and all it'll do is piss me off and make me less inclined to play by their rules in the future. So screw them for their blind ignorance, and screw New Napster too, as it's no different.
A monitored, capped, clunky, hard to use, music-only, proprietary format service which assumes you're guilty until you prove otherwise and which you have to pay for is simply laughable.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Something that I haven't seen mentioned specifically in a parent post. Why on earth would you leave Napster running and serving tracks after you've sucked down your pathetic 50 per month?
Think about it. The clock ticks past midnight, it's a new month, you've got 50 more tracks to suck. How long does that take you over a decent commection? Two hours?
Then what? You leave Napster running for the other 718 hours of the month, serving up content and pissing off your ISP? Or, more likely, you only turn it on to play the .NAP crap, and you probably disable file sharing while you're doing that, because, hey, you ain't getting anything from the network for the rest of the month, right, and you've paid for what you got (and probably had to throw half of it away), so Napster can damn well use your money to serve it's own content, right? (Try to think like a typical paying netizen rather than a Slashdotter)
One of the strengths of P2P communities is that you can spend a lot of time browsing for stuff, during which time you're part of the community and might as well be serving files as well. But after you've used up your Napster allowance for the month, what's your incentive to keep using (and contributing) to the service at all? You can search for files but not download them? How frustrating would that be?
So they might get a million customers, but at 2 hours use out of 720 a month, they'll have, what, less than 3,000 online at any given time. That's a lot of Britney Spears, but very little Stan Rogers.
My god, picture it. People sitting watching the clock, waiting for it to roll over to the 1st of the month at Napster HQ, when the feeding frenzy begins, knowing that's the only time they've got a chance of getting a good selection of content. Doesn't bear thinking about.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
the disadvantages - broken tracks, cancelled transfers - and a complete inability to stream or preview tracks.
The thing I hated about Napster, and which I still hate about its replacements (Morpheus et.al.), is the unreliability of it all. I can theoretically access an enormous library of files on Morpheus, but in practice, half of these files are undownloadable from other people's machines due to inaccurately-reported download times, spontaneous shut-downs or crashes on their end, and so forth. The ability to download a file from multiple users is only useful insofar as I can connect to their machines in the first place.
This is why the music label's efforts to put their own music online will eventually supplant peer-sharing -- provided they try to provide their entire library of songs. To typical consumers, it won't matter in the end what file format they offer or how open it is -- only whether they can find and download it reliably and quickly. In almost all cases, I can do this better from a central server or network of servers (Akamai could make a killing here) than I can by hitting some other user's cable modem.
I'd gladly pay $10-$15 a month if it meant I could download music online without having to constantly check and make sure it'll get to me by the end of the week.
and the record companies --- they do pay for the promotion and all the associated crap
ahem. No, they don't. This is a commonly held myth, even by those (such as yourself) who are otherwise disgusted by and adamently opposed to the parasitical middlemen who stand between artist and consumer, ripping off both. Courtney Love did a great writeup on this, explaining in detail (almost like a line-by-line audit) how the finances of a successful band work, and how the recording industry makes millions on gold and platinum albums while the artists make a modest $40,000 or so.
In short, all of the expenses for promotion, CD pressing, etc. are charged to the band. The record company acts as the band's vendor, providing the service and charging for the service, often at a rate higher than the band would have gotten if they had shopped the service themselves. This can happen when the entity (Tthe recording company) representing someone (the band) is the same as the one being negotiated with (the recording company), and in any non-cartel industry would be considered a serious conflict of interest. Alas, this is but one of many caveats that commonly result in many of the most successful artists working for what amounts to slave wages (and slavish hours) only to die in poverty while the recording industry gets ever richer (even posthumously long after the artist is gone).
I'd pay $1 or even $2 per song to an artist I like gladly, but I will never pay for music again where such goes through the thieving hands of a recording company. If this means I get all my music from the radio, recorded myself for my own personal use, with no cover art and no shiny disc, then so be it. If someone comes along that really rocks my world I'll attend their concerts, buy their t-shirts, or send them a donation via fairtunes or something. I will not support a cartel industry that is not only stealing from the consumers and the artists, but actively trying to destroy the greatest potential of the internet and the computer industry as a whole, namely the free sharing of information, and I would encourage anyone who gives something more than a rat's ass about such issues to do likewise.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy