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Bertelsmann Looking At Pulling Plug On Napster

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the deader-then-a-door-nail dept.

azaroth42 writes "The end of Napster has finally come according to the Guardian as German group Bertelsmann pull the plug on the already 'past its use by date' music service. And the same story on CNN."

7 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Napster gets pulled at last?... by meringuoid · · Score: 3, Insightful
    ... How did anyone notice?

    Seriously, though, this isn't news. Bertelsmann got its tentacles into Napster when it was the biggest thing on the net. Now it's a set of servers with no users.

    Napster is, de facto, a stiff, bereft of life; it is no more. Bertelsmann have enough sense not to throw good money after bad.

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  2. Re:ADvertising by meringuoid · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Bertelsmann got a lot of free advertising out of this, so it is not like they lost all of thier investment.

    Does that help, though?

    As far as I know nobody goes to the CD store and says 'Ooh, a new EMI album! Must have!' The valuable brands are the various McPunk skater kiddies or bubblegum plastic-pop groups, rather than the name of the record label itself. Being a recognised brand could help when signing new artists, but I doubt it helps sales of CDs directly.

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  3. does it really matter? by SystematicPsycho · · Score: 3, Insightful

    alot of ppl got rich out of napster, and alot of other ppl got happy - the only groups that weren't happy was the music industry, doesn't mean they didn't get rich. I think everyone has an artist[s] they found through p2p that went out and bought there cd. Nevertheless a whole new breed of p2p systems are up and running, testing the legal system and giving alot of lawyers work. Basically business models that operate until the lawyers shut them down, then a new system that finds a legal loophole in the old.

    --
    Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
  4. Beer GOOD, Napster BAD! by SystematicPsycho · · Score: 3, Funny

    At least while napster was still in action (the good old days) these cartoons were still funny. Nevertheless if you hadn't seen them here the are -
    Beer GOOD - Napster BAD!

    --
    Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
  5. Re:this is news? by blixel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think most Metallica fans became "former" the day the Load album was released. They haven't made a good album since the black album and even that was tame compared to their older stuff.

    Agreed... The black album was still pretty good but just wasn't the same as the older stuff. Personally I liked "...and justice for all" the best, even more so than their albums when Cliff Burton was their bassist.

    But I think most Metallica fans became "former" the day Lars decided to become the spokesperson against Napster. I mean come on dude... Go watch some of the old Metallica documentries where Lars himself was advocating how great it was in the old days when Metallica fans were ILLEGALLY swapping Metallica tapes amongst themselves. My, how we've changed our tune. (No pun intended.) It was OK then because no one knew who Metallica was and they were spreading the music, thus creating a larger fan base. But now that they are established and each band member has 60 million dollars each, it's not so great any more? What a hypocrit!

  6. Day of infamy by the+bluebrain · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So I'll get shot down in flames for the quote in the subject line ... but I believe there is indeed a quite historical aspect to this story:

    Most /.ers will have read some SF (that *Speculative*, godamit :) tome on the subject of the Valhalla machine (or whatever you want to call it): the end of the age of scarcity, thanks to "universal replicators".

    The "IP" version of this is the "celestial jukebox" ... which Napster would have become, but for the stumbling blocks.

    I can imagine business / law majors a couple of decades down the line pointing out to us, back here in the time well, just where we went wrong & what we *should* have done - how it could have worked.

    Music & films nowadays *can* be replicated & distributed for nothing more than the very cheap transmission & storage costs - thing is of course, they *aren't*.

    I am very aware of all the linkage - artists & crew having to feed families & suchlike - but nonetheless, humanity almost had it, but somehow couldn't quite manage to organise things in such a way as to enjoy the fruits of the labour of previous generations & share the luxury of entertainment & education all round the globe.

    Grand-style napsterisation of anything & everything digitizable *will* come ... and Shawn Fanning's legacy may be just that: the word.
    Hopefully it won't acquire any more negative connotations than it already, illegitimately, has.

    ----

    "and they say that I'm a dreamer / but I'm not the only one"

    --
    yes, we have no bananas
  7. Question by Mr_Silver · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Now Napster is (or was for a long time) dead, and audiogalaxy has gone to a land far far away ...

    What else can I use to download MP3's? I'm not really interested in a multiple media job, just straight MP3's.

    I did try WinMX but found it sucked, you had to queue for everything and the interface was horrible.

    Any suggestions? I'm rapidily finding it more and more difficult to try tracks before I buy albums.

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