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New Legit Napster Service Coming
Serith submitted a CNN story talking about the new
Napster Service. This is of course an attempt to legitimize music sharing. Provided the price point is fair and paying is convenient, I'll be first in line. Of course the odds of that happening seems awfully weak.
That did not stop music publishers from suing Bertelsmann for $17 billion last week, arguing that by throwing Napster a lifeline in 2002 it was responsible for the service continuing its illegal infringement.
this reminds me of when the photocopiers in the libraries had to have huge disclaimers about copying any material that was copyrighted.
i can only hope that personal use will extend to purchased music as much as it did to purchased books. as much as i hate these lawsuits, it is in the courts that the personal use issue actually finds some teeth.
Its amazing what some people will go through to get something free
There will always be backdoors and new applications for sharing. Until the RIAA decides to shut down IRC and FTP et al. they will never remove music swapping from the world of file sharing.
People are greedy, they want it for free, and they'll get it.
Posting as directed.
Of course the odds of that happening seems awfully weak.
When the headline's only a few sentences long, do we need this sort of pessimism occupying so much space?
I for one think there's plenty of promise in a pay-per-download music service. If it's easy to use, and, here's the most important part: accessible to teens and pre-teens. Allow for a charge account to be set up by the parents, with the kids spending "credits" to download music, games, cell ringers, etc. Are you listening, BMG?
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
I find the fact that Roxio has hired X-napsterite Shawn Fanning as a consultant one of the most important points in the article, hopefully with his help we can finally have an easy to use legal way to acquire music.
paul reinheimer
Is this really true peer to peer? Peer to peer is fine, but I'd be hesitant to have give up my bandwidth while downloading music I paid for.
Whale
And we all know the consequences of that - Record exec's saying "blah people won't buy music online blah piracy blah new DMCA blah THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!
Provided the price point is fair and paying is convenient, I'll be first in line.
Just out of curiosity, how many people consider a 'fair' price point to be greater than $0.00? Very few hardcore filesharers will actually buy music online, because the price is 'unfair'.
And how convenient does this have to be? Credit Card? (Oh, wait, we don't trust 'those people' with our credit cards.)
('Those people' being anyone who gets in bed with music producers.)
This is the real signature
(Beats those shadows on the cave wall, don't it?)
- The word is "insight". It isn't used at all in the linked article, and is misspelled twice in the original posting.
- Roxio, the company that took Easy CD Creator and turned it into an unstable piece of garbage is going to do something with Napster? Good luck.
- While occasionally, you'll find someone who says "The artists deserve to get paid for their work," most people say "CDs cost too much, and Kazaa, Gnutella, EDonkey, WinMX, etc. are free." If you really want to support an artist, download what you want from the P2P networks (or FTP or IRC), and send the artists a check in the mail. Cut out the middleman and show the RIAA that they aren't adding any value and don't deserve to get paid
</rant>Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Ok. My Mom is the type of person who would never steal anything from anyone. Totally good soul . But even she sees no problem with getting CDs copied or songs downloaded form the Internet, in fact she gets me to do it all the time. Why? Because for decades the radio stations have convinced the general populace that music is free (after all, if you can listen to it wherever you want for no charge, isn't that free?). Most people do not mind listning to a few ads on the radio, in fact, many people enjoy advertisements. So with this general mindset that music doens't really cost anything, why would they be expected to pay for it? Ever since the 8 track tape was invented people have copying music. These people don't get (or care) that it is digital and therefore it is an exact copy, they just by default expect to be allowed to do it.
This makes me laugh. Where is the value of this new system supposed to come from? Experience dictates that people don't adopt new technological methods of doing things unless there is a marked value improvement. While downloading MP3s is marginally easier than buying a CD (on-line or otherwise), you get lower sound quality, no physical media, and no printed materials.
Even if the value of being able to buy one song at a time and burn your own customized CDs is a significant enough improvement to alter consumers' behaviour (which I think is debatable), the perceived value of such a service has been diluted by the ability to do that exact same thing for free for years!
These companies are in a rush to grab a potentially huge market, but their business plans SUCK because there is no added value. I propose that declining CD sales may have more to do with the ease of burning CDs than actual Internet filesharing. With the current music marketing model of revenues coming from a few multi-platinum albums, it becomes very easy for kids to burn each other CDs since they all want the same mass-consumed product.
One way to give themselves a bit more protection might be to try to diversify musical interests so it wouldn't be easy to share 'the hot album'. I'm not sure if it's feasible, but they could save a lot of money on production and advertising, and still garner some major hits through word of mouth sales (kids will do an awful lot of free promotion if you're clever).
Now I know I may be talking out my ass, but the point is that recycling old concepts and increasing the price is NOT going to be a succesful business model.
No, no, no. "Napster" without file SHARING is not Napster.
Napster was never about "free music." Napster was always about community, about "sharing my collection--my very own, personal, idiosyncratic collection."
There is no way the record companies are going to provide the same variety or the same breadth of coverage as a bunch of dedicated enthusiasts.
Sure, I'll be able to get Britney Spears from this site--but am I really going to be able to get Arthur Askey? Or cylinder recordings by Billy Murray? Or sound effects? The Weavers' recording of "Tzena, tzena, tzena?" Bernard Cribbins singing "'Ole in the Ground?"
What, you say--you've never heard about them and don't care about them? Of course not. But on the old Napster there were people who did, and shared them with me. And you have a bunch of stuff of your own that you care about, that _I"ve_ never heard of. Maybe even stuff that isn't available on CD.
This new "Napster" is a one way road. It's going to be all about what the record companies push, and nothing about what the music buying public wants.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Roxio's "Napster" isn't the real thing. It won't have any peer-to-peer. It'll be just another resale of MusicNet and/or Pressplay. "Napster" will have downloads for computer-only play that expire when the subscription is no longer paid up. There will be premium-priced "burns" for a price that makes CDs look cheap, but competitive for "singles" (e.g., around a buck a track). Roxio's value is to integrate it better into Roxio's software.
Napster Fanning himself? He's just a figurehead. George Foreman does more appliance design than Fanning will do with the actual running of this service.
Of course it'll flop, but that's what the record industry wants.
?? This isn't any better than buying the cd.
Money not found! A)bort, R)etry, D)eclare Bankruptcy
...because most people won't pay for what they can get for free otherwise. While the system may make some money, it won't even put a dent in copyright infringement. There will always be another free file sharing system. I've asked a number of my friends - most of who are not techie type people - if they would be doing it if they had to pay for their downloads. They all said no.
We can all scream bloody murder about how there are no pay systems, CD prices are too high, artists today blow, intellectual property rights are wrong, filesharing actually increases CD sales, capitalism is evil, whatever your favorite argument is...the fact is you can't beat free and as long as the people can get it for free, the majority of people will not use a pay service.
That's reality. Maybe not the reality in your head or on Slashdot, but the reality of the world.
Frankly, I think if anyone has a shot at making the pay-for thing work it's Apple. The only thing that will make music downloading worth paying for is ease of use. That is, finding what you want easily, with guaranteed quality, easy to burn a CD, etc. And I mean one-button simple. The best man for a job like that is the Big Steve.
The one thing I worry about is the idea that, according to rumor, they'll be charging ~ $0.99 per track. I think that's a bit steep unless they have some slick way of giving you album art and liner notes or other bonus materials.
I wish Apple and Roxio the best of luck. I really want to believe in pay-for-download music. I really want to believe that if you do this right, someone will pay for it.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
I'm from Canada and I already pay money for my hard drives, my CDs and all my other storage space that goes to the RIAA. I personally don't feel that I need to pay any more so that I can use this media for the same intent (downloading/copying) as I've already paid for.
If they're gonna tax me for piracy, then it's my goddamned right to pirate.
I'm going to use p2p services and download all that I want, and it'll be perfectly legal, seeing as how I've already paid the RIAA, so why shouldn't I have a right to it?
Karma: Non-Heinous
Heck, then I can compress it myself in whatever format I choose.
Not for long. That would be a "Copy".
We can't have that now can we???
Maybe you should educate the morons of tomorrow so they'll stop believing the leaders of tomorrow. - Dogbert
"She added that the company was in discussions with the five largest record labels -- Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group; Sony Music; AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Music Group; Bertelsmann AG; and EMI Group Plc -- to license their music."
.mp3 collection is "recovered", songs I owned at one point but the medium became damaged or obsolete. If these songs are "intellectual property", then I legally own at least half of them. Why should I be charged twice?
.mp3 player...
What I originally liked about Napster was the fact I wasn't constrained to downloading from the traditional schlock the radio and MTV push on us. I'd say 80% of the music I've been introduced to in the last few years is thanks to Napster and Kazaa lite. I'd of never heard bands like Thursday, Death Cab for Cutie, or Rival Schools without digital music, now they're some of my favorite artists, all of whom I've attended their concerts. Now digital music is all I listen to, and I've been freed from listening to corperate schlock. I couldn't tell you who's on the Top 20 right now, nor have I watched MTV or listened to the radio for about 3 years (seriously).
It's the same problem in a different medium: push pre-processed garbage music down peoples throats. HELLO! That's why people aren't buying music in the first place! Why pay 17$ for a CD which you might listen to two songs on? Most of the time I get bored of that song after a month or two anyway.
The biggest thrill of Napster, though, was being able to get all those old songs you used to have, but your CDs were stolen/scratched/lost or you don't own a tape/record player. About half my
I wonder if their new ploy will work with my portible
"In a Democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve." -Winston Churchill
If a music company wants me to pay for music (and I buy a lot of music), then I'm not going to pay $1-1.50 for a music track that comes in a compressed, horrible quality mp3 format when I can go buy it on a CD in a store that sounds far, far better, I can rip and manage myself, and if I have a hard drive crash, won't have to buy it again. In the end, mp3's sound awful (even at 320 bitrates, and ogg sounds awful as well) compared to CD's/SACD/DVD-A and I'm not going to pay for something that sounds worse.
Janis Ian once pointed out that if the record companies had partnered with Napster and collected a nickel for every song downloaded (a reasonable price point) they would have realized revenue of $500,000 a day.
But, such an arrangement will never be agreed to by the record industry for one simple reason. Greed. The mindset of the record companies is "why should we sell songs for a nickel when we can sell CDs for $18"
People are cheap in general. They wont spend money on something if they know they can get it for free, even if it's illegal and safe. It's all opportunistic, I'm sure most people would go steal cars from an Aston Martin dealer if there was a 0.0001% change that the law would get involved. I say the best way to make this new Napster work is to attack sources where people can get free music. By this I'm referring to IRC and Kazaa, which I hear is having it's own legal problems. On top of that, it's hard to get rid of LAN sharing, at say a university residence, where there are 700 students all connected and accessible, and you can get basically any song you want. Even if getting music off the net is difficiult, people are bound to rip their songs off their CD's and share them on the network. I really don't think music ripping and warez will go away until there is some sort of water tight security system on the net, but then doing that would probably violate the whole concept of the internet. I just wonder how bad warez and music ripping will be 20 years from now.