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BMG to Purchase Napster
asv108 writes "In a dramatic reversal, Bertelsmann has agreed to purchase Napster's assets. Founder Shawn Fanning and CEO Konrad Hilbers are set to return to the company after announcing their resignation earlier this week."
Yes, my valuation of Napster is up there with Enron and Global Crossing. :)
So many assets!
Just why are BMG doing this? It would seem they've missed the boat - no one is going to pay for something which before they could get for free. Are they just being stupid, or can they see something we can't?
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Founder Shawn Fanning...set to return to the company after announcing their resignation earlier this week.
..after realizing he had zero experience or skill to work anywhere else.
so.. the company that was (or still is?) suing Napster has now purchased it. I think it's safe to say that Napster is officially dead.
There's no "I" in Linux.. err..
is about 2 years behind everyone else... I am just worried they bought napster in order to patent some of the involved technologies. They do have the money to pay the lawyers to try to do that.
Yes, they purchased napster, but they aren't allowed to make copies of the company or share it with any of their partners. Shame. Although if you stick a post-it note on Shawn's face, you can clone him!
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
With OpenNAP, WinMX, and so many other P2P solutions available these days, does anyone really care about Napster? By today's standards, centralized hub-trading is sort of obsolete..
tar zxvf bag.tar.gz | cat cat
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
napster changed everything, but when it died others stepped up to the plate. Sure the time in between sucked (aimster and early limewire, etc.) but now with the fastrack network and audiogalaxy, mp3s are pretty much as easy to get as before, sans the convienence of a centralized server. Secondly, napster is going to be using their new file format, and it has no chance of replacing mp3s. mp3s are popular and have a well saturated population on the net. Other formats have come out that are smaller in size at the same quality like wma(yeh i know its windows only) and ogg, but mp3s stay on top because of popularity and convience. Finally, since they have been bought by BMG, I assume there is going to be some sort monetary transaction involved. Are people willing to pay for music? Yes, I believe so, but only if it is really cheap (99 cents a song or so) and most of the money goes directly to the artists. I don't know what their plan is.
So basically, what Im saying is napster has a chance to get back in the game, but it won't succeed, and I think most people will agree.
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Sounds like another large corp. knows the 3 E's of competition: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
I haven't used Napster since "the man" first cracked down on them, because there are so many alternatives which will forever be free. I don't use these, either, as emusic.com provides quality music, fast downloads, and I'm actually supporting the artists in the end. I'd rather pay a small fee to get what I want then endlessly search for what I want with a free client.
Napster is dead, and due to the fact that Napster isn't Jesus, Napster is going to stay dead. I'm glad the record companies are wasting their time and resources trying to bring back the service they destroyed. The irony of companies wasting their money trying to revitalize a service that they claimed would cause them to lose money. -agent oranje. its not just for breakfast anymore.
-agent oranje.
I'm curious though...can these free ones ever be stopped indefinitely? It seems like more and more pop up whenever one dies. Is it even technologically possible to stop peer to peer file sharing that will filter out copyrighted files while leaving non-copyrighted files in the bin for the picking? Poor guys at Napster...how does a bankrupt company turn down $16 million to begin with? Did the deal free them of all debt from them? It's like telling a bum that he could sell his shirt for $200. Seems like they're kicking a dead horse with this one...
It is official: ZDNet confirms: IP theft is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered IP theft community when IDC confirmed that IP theft market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all file-sharing. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that IP theft has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. IP theft is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict IP theft's future. The hand writing is on the wall: IP theft faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for IP theft because IP theft is dying. Things are looking very bad for IP theft. As many of us are already aware, IP theft continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. Napster is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core users.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Gnutella leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of Gnutella. How many users of KazAA are there? Let's see. The number of Gnutella versus KazAA posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 KazAA users. Morpheus posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of KazAA posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Morpheus. A recent article put Napster at about 80 percent of the IP theft market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Napster users. This is consistent with the number of Napster Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of RIAA, abysmal sales and so on, Napster went out of business and was taken over by BMG who sell another troubled OS. Now Napster is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that IP theft has steadily declined in market share. IP theft is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If IP theft is to survive at all it will be among Music dilettante pirates. IP theft continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, IP theft is dead.
Well, at least SOMEONE is buying something from napster now.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
BMG, and the rest of RIAA, can sell something that no file-sharing app can get you. Legallity and legitimacy.
There is a price-point where people will pay to have a legal right to the song that's allready illegally on their computer. If BMG can figure out the right price point, they can make a profit selling nothing but legitimacy.
Personally, I'd give them my legal name, home address, and give them permission to track me until the day I die IF I can get a full legal title to the music I buy. I want to be able to get a "replacement media" discount on a new copy of my destroyed CD. I want to be able to download lossless song files to burn me a custom album, and have it be 100% legit.
I won't pay $50 a month to do this. I would pay $5 a year. Somewhere in between those two, I would have to reserve judgement until the offer's been made.
If BMG can provide what I want, I will buy from them.
Any publicity is good publicity...
And the whole lawsuit thing was a whole lot of publicity where Napster was seen as the underdog by most people. Now BMG not only owns Napster, but owns that image they helped to create.
What will they do with it? I dunno, but you can bet it will involve them trying to make a profit. Don't go lookin for freebies.
- The software, while innovative will probably need an almost complete rewrite when they go to a new legit way of distributing music
- All of their customers have gone over to Kaza, Gnutella, etc.
- The name is now synonymous with illegal music. Although maybe they think it is worth something.
- The company still needs to file for bankruptcy protection.
So why are they paying so much for a company who's net worth ranks right up there with Enron? Is it?Napster is a household name by now. Even my parents still recognize it. That is worth some $.
Duh!
I guess we can expect a new download club from BMG where you download 4 songs for 49 cents, if you agree to buy another 3 at regular club prices?
More information about the takeover in this comment here.
æeee!
If the anti-circumvention part was taken out of the DMCA it wouldn't be so bad if they followed up with an ammendment that says that an ISP can add a bill of >=$1 to the home user monthly bill that would be collected and sent to the RIAA to distribute and then all home users of that ISP would be immune from not-for profit file sharing copyright prosecution or liability. If I could pay $5 a month extra to be immune from prosecution and lawsuits so that I could use whatever protocol I want to download music to sample.... that is a pretty damn small price to pay.
is a major section of the internet dark?
I see this as a move by BMG to use the Napster name to push their dated and exploitive business model onto the web.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Napster as we know it is dead.
The recording industry as we know it (certainly the distribution side) is probably heading that way too.
We can guess, but no one really knows what the future holds for media production and distribution -- lot's of ideas for business models and cultural shifts - but no one really has a clue what's going to stick.
But everyone and their grandmother knows the name Napster and what it stands for, and there is already a certain amount of nostalgia for the first breakthough P2P music service and probably always will be since they did come first.
BMG is probably just hedging their bets.
Their best move might be to buy the Napster "assets" -- just the name and history really, then just hold on to it for a while so they don't tarnish the "brand".
Maybe P2P, ripping, and burning will just go away with some breakthrough copy protection -- I'm certainly not betting on it and they probably aren't either. Like everybody else in the recording industry, they'll kick and scream and try to hold on to their tenuous historical position while also experimenting with various on-line ventures - most of which will be doomed to mixed results and outright failure.
Once the cards really start to fall (along with many of the established players who won't accept drastically lower margins and/or different revenue sources) and a more stable model is reached, BMG could then rebrand the best product or service they've developed or adopted as the "New Napster(tm)" to help save whatever value their stock might still have.
Branding certainly isn't what is once was, but for an aging multi-billion dollar conglomerate, throwing down a few million is nothing if they can one day claim to be the first player in whatever new industry paradigm emerges and hopefully evoke a little nostagia while they're at it.
"Remember the first time you used Napster...?"
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
What's even cooler is that they just released a new version of WinMX a few days ago that has a bunch of great fixes. I hear they even added some new functionality, such as downloading a file from multiple people (like Morpheus).
Remember, when you pay for MP3s, You're Rockin' Out with The Man!
... and they can't buy that with any amount of money: the old Napster user base. Without that, they have nothing.
Unless, of course, they're changing it into a whole different 'service' (i.e. no longer p2p but direct downloads from Bertelsmann's servers), in which case it's no longer Napster.
This is great news--Bertelsmann is throwing a ton of money down a rat hole!
-- Shamus
Bleah!
i wish i could sell absolutely nothing of value to a company for $8 million dollars.
So does this mean BMG and the RIAA own the search and transfer logs relating to everyone who ever used the service? "Dear sir/madam, we notice you downloaded an illegal MP3, you owe us $100,000 per song. KTHX."
I do want the whole album, as do a lot of other people. (Maybe you need to find better artists?)
1 to 2 cents is probably lower than we'll ever see, but i think 10 cents per song would be quite reasonable. What we need is a revolution in digital rights awareness, and a service where forwardthinking artists can choose to sell their mp3s cheaply (and under a license that allows users to redistribute them). Their should be a clear open policy about how much of the money goes to artists, though obviously the company will need a cut for operating costs.
There is absolutely no reason that the majority of the money we spend on music should end up in the pockets of business people rather than musicians; the current system is clearly broken. So until capitalism corrects itself and offers me a legal reasonable (affordable) way to get mp3s, I'm going to continue to ignore the RIAA's squeals and share music all I want.
Oh, and fuck Hilary Rosen. That bitch is pure evil, and not in the good way.
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin