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

Up to 50 tracks

[Morth]

So what are the chances people won't contact eachother and then transfer the music outside napster, through ICQ for example?

Re:Up to 50 tracks

[andfarm]

None.

Most of the tracks on (the new) Napster are in a proprietary format, which means that (if you copied them somewhere else) they wouldn't work. At all. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it set off some sort of alarm. Or made your computer explode.

AARghhh...

Re:Up to 50 tracks

[GregGardner]

In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it set off some sort of alarm. Or made your computer explode.

It can happen. It was reported in the Weekly World News

Napster Died a long time ago...

[kilgore_47]

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?

Re:Napster Died a long time ago...

[furiousgeorge]

>>Seriously, does anybody expect this
>>pay-for-mp3's thing to take off?

You know - I'd be willing to pay.

Seriously, for $1 or $2 per song I'd probably spend a fortune. I totally believe that the artists (and the record companies --- they do pay for the promotion and all the associated crap even though they are pure evil) deserve to be paid.

BUT........

Nobody who is putting together one of these systems is interested in that. They want to put a bazillion restrictions on me. It's in a proprietary,locked format. You can't dump it to your portable MP3 player. You can't burn it onto a CD to play it into a car. If you cancel your subscription you LOSE ALL THE MUSIC YOU'VE PAID FOR (No - i'm not making this one up. I believe it's PressPlay that does that. You only have access to the tracks you've paid for as long as you keep kicking up monthly cash).

So instead of getting some of my money - they don't get any. They just don't get it - and I don't know if they ever will. If you're going to try to rob me of the basic freedoms I have with CD based audio, there is ZERO chance you're going to get me on board.

Sorry folks - they days of paying $15-20 for a CD (and at LEAST $6-8 more compared to the exact same album on tape) are over. You've milked that cow long enough.

If i could pay for the mp3 tracks i wanted i bet i'd end up spending at least $30 a month. (I listen to a lot of club music that i couldn't buy in a store because it's just not there). Instead - I spend nothing and slurp it all off the net. I honestly can't remember the last CD I purchased (not including blanks of course )

The sooner the labels realize this the better. But they won't.
They'll keep kicking and screaming, sponsoring new legislation trying to put the genie back in the bottle.

Too late. Sorry. So sad.

Napster from an (ex)employee's perspective

[VWswing]

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.

Re:Napster from an (ex)employee's perspective

[diwolf]

I still can't ever figure out.. How did Napster MAKE MONEY? Or did they operate like the "Change Bank" from SNL (Saturday Night Live)..

Customer: I was in a rush. I needed to change a $50. I wanted a twenty and two tens...

Bank Rep: Well, our computers caught the mistake RIGHT AWAY! We made sure he got the right change.

Customer: They helped me out when I needed change for the payphone. Thanks Change Bank!

Bank Rep: We are asked how we make money. Volume. We simply do it on volume.

Who wants to pay for Napster?

[guttentag]

If you're going to go to the trouble of paying for your music, you should at least get:

• Something tangible that won't disappear if your hard drive crashes
• High-quality sound (don't get me wrong... MP3s sound great, but they're not CD quality)
• And, what the heck, it may as well be shiny, aerodynamic and mountable on your cubicle wall as functional artwork

If only there was something like that available...

Bravo Napster!

[Beautyon]

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.

Napster, napster, napster...

[simetra]

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.

Re:Napster, napster, napster...

[skoda]

Two years ago:
Napster is King of the World!
Dot-com boom
People rolling in money
"New Economy"
The "business cycle" is dead
People buying many CDs

The past six months:
Napster is in third-class cargo
Dot-com bust
People getting laid-off in recession
Same old Economy
The business cycle isn't quite dead
People aren't buying as many CDs.

Correlation does not always mean Causation. I personally think that Napster is indicative, not causative, of music sales.

Re:Napster, napster, napster...

[jms]

Although I believe folks that say that they bought more CDs due to music exposure through Napster, I don't think there are enough of those folks to have caused the CD sale spike.

How are people exposed to new music? Up until a few years ago, the answer was that they heard new songs on the Radio. When Napster came along, that changed for a lot of people. Instead of listening to the same handful of corporate-pumped songs interspersed with commercials, many, many people went to their computer to find new music. Now that Napster is essentially gone, the recording industry has, in effect, severed the only remaining advertising link between their product, and an entire generation of college-age customers.

Now that people have less free money, they aren't buying as many CDs, and record sales are back down.

That's one theory, but consider this. In times of recession, people are more likely to spend money on less expensive luxuries. You may not be able to afford that SUV or plasma TV now, but you can probably afford a reasonably priced dinner out, or a couple of tickets to Lord Of The Rings, or a cup of gourmet coffee from Starbucks, or a CD by a new band.

Traditionally, music sales and movie theatres do good business during hard economic times. During the Great Depression, the movie industry made enough money to finance the construction of whole chains of movie palaces the likes of which we'll never see again! Right now, the movie industry is in an enormous boom -- movies right now are making hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. Why is it that people are perfectly willing to spend $9.50 to see a movie once, but don't want to spend $15.00 for a CD that they can keep? The music industry is in the middle of an enormous market failure, and that market failure strongly correlates to the shutdown of Napster. In a bad economy, the music industry should be making money hand over fist. The fact that sales are collapsing is a red flag that they're doing something horribly, horribly wrong.

Napster's rise and fall happened to coincide with the CD sales spike because the Napster phenomenon was tied to the 'net explosion and subsequent implosion, which were driving the economic train that influenced the CD sales bump.

Theory: Napster created a demand for bandwidth, and the destruction of Napster ruined the market for broadband. What's the point of buying DSL if there's nothing to download? I believe that the shutdown of Napster sent shock waves rippling through the economy that significantly contributed to the current recession. This wasn't something that happened in a vacuum. The shutdown of Napster eliminated a major incentive for consumers to upgrade their internet service, and their computers as well. A lot of things have gone wrong in the tech sector in the last few years, but there's probably nothing that did more to squelch the demand for broadband then the elimination of the only compelling internet service that required significant bandwidth!

Again, I have a lot of respect for people who heard a tune on Napster and went out and bought the album - the recording industry doesn't deserve you guys. But I think that for every principled music listener like that, there were probably five people in their dorm rooms or at home in high school who were just amassing free music because it was cheap and there.

I'll suggest that using Napster to amass music only makes economic sense if you're a broke college student sitting on free bandwidth. Otherwise, it's a complete waste of time and energy, and people eventually figure that out.

Time is money. At any given time, any given individual rarely has both. If you're a young college student, you generally have lots of free time, and very little disposible income. The situation completely changes once you leave school and join the workforce. Once you have a job, suddenly you have disposible income, and very little free time.

What's the "cost" of downloading a "free" album from Napster? Well, you've got to find all of the album tracks, then download them, then re-download all the ones that were corrupted or timed out. Then, assuming that you're really trying to displace a CD purchase, you'll spend time uncompressing the songs, and burning a CD. Finally, you'll probably want to make up a CD label. And, you're running up your modem bill, unless you have broadband. How long did that take you, from beginning to end? Let's say that it took you three hours, from beginning to finished "product." What was the "cost" of this free album? The answer is the cost of the authentic product divided by the amount of time it took you to make the bootleg product.

$15.00 / 3 hours = 3 hours work at $5.00 per hour

In exchange for working for three hours at sub-minimum wage, you now have a product, inferior in every way, to something you could have just purchased in the store for $15.00. That makes no economic sense whatsoever ...

... unless you're a college student who has free time but no money, in which case you aren't really a potential current customer anyway, because you can't afford the product!

Had you just stopped at the record store and bought the album, you could have come home, put your new album on the stereo, read through the pretty liner notes, and had a nice piece of art to add to your music collection. Hell, if you really wanted the music in MP3 format, it's a hell of a lot cheaper -- and more reliable -- to buy the CD and rip it yourself.

For someone with any amount of disposible income, the only rational use of Napster is as a music sampling/finding tool.

But what about all those college students who spent all that time amassing huge MP3 collections?

They are the next generation of music collectors! If someone spends hours collecting thousands of hours of music, they're learning to love music and learning to want to collect it. They are probably more likely, once they have disposible income and lose their disposible time, to want to continue their "habit" -- only once they enter the workforce it becomes much more economical for them to feed their "habit" with store-bought CDs!

In effect, when the music industry sets out to trash MP3 collectors, they are trashing their own best future customers! If the music industry succeeds in driving college students away from music collecting, then those college students will find something else to spend their college free-time, and later, their workplace free-income on.

Even if Napster raised their sales, it was also uncontrollable by them, and these guys are all about control.

Exactly! The music industry is all about control. The only reason that the recording companies are able to sign musicians to one-sided rip-off contracts is because they have a virtual monopoly over every aspect of the music market. Take that monopoly away, and the recording industry has no value to artists. The effort to shut down, then cripple Napster, serves one purpose -- to re-consolidate control over what music Americans are exposed to.

This battle is all about control.

RIAA loves this.

[Gannoc]

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.

Re:RIAA loves this.

[NMerriam]

Is that spin? Or is that reality?

What are the biggest problems with digital music right now?

* hard to find a given song/artist/CD
* quality is uneven
* takes time/effort to rip your own CDs
* tranfers abort, and lots of incomplete songs around
* new, better formats, or bigger drive measn that you might want something other than a 128k MP3 in the future

So what's the solution? To make a crippled pay-per-play system with all of the same shortcomings, except now you have to shell out good money for incomplete downloads?

If the music companies would provide answers to those problems, they could easily be making ten times what they get today within a decade. Every music consumer in the world pays $14.95 a month for unlimited access to complete archives of the companies, in whatever format is most convenient, digitized straight from the original recording, and with always-on dedicated servers for providing the files.

And like TiVo, you've got central servers to compare listening tastes, providing you with constantly updated recommendations based on what you've already listened to.

No more MP3 files with incorrect ID tags, no more ripping and re-ripping, no more aborted downloads. Plus dead-on accurate recommendations for bands you love but never would have known about!

people will pay for convenience and service in music like everything else. This is a market just waiting for the music industry idiots to get off their butts and sell to it. if Napster did this it would take a few years to get going, but eventually become hugely profitable.

How financially limited did cable TV look 30 years ago? Yeah, lots of folks just went over to a friends house to watch HBO rather than pay for it themselves. But over time it just became easier for everyone to pay their 35 bucks a month and get cable into their own home. Now people are starting to pay another $9.95 a month for TiVo service and consider it a bargain.

there's a price point where it's just "too cheap NOT to buy", and the music industry is nowhere near it yet.

Broadband

[Merkins]

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...

Will this be cracked?

[Deagol]

From the article:

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.

HitchHiker's Guide To Napster Review.

[Tackhead]

Hurlig Frootmig, HitchHiker's Guide To The Galaxy Editor Emeritus of Megadodo Publications, and the being responsible for the editing of Ford Prefect's entry for "Earth" into the two-word mostly harmless, had this to say:

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"

Who do independent artists sue?

[Xenopax]

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.

Common sentiment...

[Forager]

I know this is a common sentiment, but allow me to voice why I won't be subscribing to Napster any time soon:

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 ... 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.

(Just don't get me started about LEECHES on the new Napster ... )

~A.

Re:What's the point

[damiam]

Ummmmm.. maybe because it's actually legal to download and keep copyrighted music from Napster?

Let me get this right:

[SomeOtherGuy]

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

Who wants to start a pool?

[brogdon]

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.

Re:50 tracks a month?

[fader]

there are people out there who want to "do the right thing" and pay for their music

Okay, so let's see. I can use Napster for an undisclosed fee (I'm betting on the neighborhood of $10/month) and get 50 tracks, which I have to get by trusting that the person on the other end ripped correctly. Plus I have to donate my own bandwith to do it. (Excuse me? I'm paying them to use my bandwidth? Did I miss where this is a good deal?)

Or I can go to emusic.com and pay $9.99 per month and legally download as many MP3s as my greedy heart desires. Plus they're categorized and ripped by people whose job it is to do this all day, so they're presumably of good quality. Plus I can download entire albums at once. Plus I don't have to share my collection with anyone, or let anyone scan my hard drive.

Hmm, tough choice. Napster is doomed. (Disclaimer: I don't own any emusic stock. I don't even know if they're publicly traded. I don't even have an account there. So there.)

Re:What's the point

[sulli]

Download, yes; keep, no, not when that .CRAP format is required.

Re:Show me.

[furiousgeorge]

I just went and looked at eMusic.com.

Didn't see a single thing I wanted.

Thats my whole point. The only stuff that is being released digitally is:

a) alternative, fringe, old, or otherwise stuff that I don't want.
b) the latest and greatest, with the largest collections, but saddled with so many conditions and restrictions I'd be throwing away money.

Sure - eMusic.com is *something*, but it sure ain't what I want. This afternoon I downloaded 30 tracks off AudioGalaxy. I just searched for them on eMusic. Nope - not a single one.

>>put your money where your mouth is.

Show me somewhere i can spend my money that offers the service and selection i'm expecting. eMusic sure ain't it. I know eMusic isn't the only game in town, but it's very representative.

This has nothing to do with 'hot air'. If i'm looking to pay for a particular song, i want that song. I don't want some other generic or substitute from the same 'genre'. This isn't like going to the supermarket and substituting one brand of milk for another.