Slashdot Mirror
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.
We authorize you to distribute this audio file among your employees:
the_sound_of_a_boot_meeting_a_dead_horse.mp3
Cordially,
The RIAA
Do you like German cars?
this reminds me of when the photocopiers in the libraries had to have huge disclaimers about copying any material that was copyrighted.
When office copiers were first coming out, publishers of recipe books fought to prevent them from being available too easily. Their fear? Secretaries, who at the time were mainly female, would copy recipes out of books for swapping amongst themselves.
Trolling is a art,
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.
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 managed to buy most of Roxio's assets, but it did not assume any of the company's pending liabilities.
That's pretty nice I wish I could buy up all of my own assets and hot have to pay for any of my liabilities.
...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.
I always fealt that the easiest way for the record industry to counter this is to simply make legitimate purchase easier that p2p.
Imagine being able to walk into Best Buy (using a kiosk for the broadband impaired) or a simple web page and accomplish the following.
1) Design/burn your own music CD selected from the complete vast archives of the music biz.
2) Each song being 128k quality or better or varying based on cost
3) Each song costing anywhere between 49-99 cents each
4) Each song delivered in choice of format (.mp3 or wav etc...)
5) Provide some kind of e-receipt which you could use to re-download/burn music that you lost or damaged (eliminate need for "backup")
Then all they would need to do is promote the crap out of the service using all the money they saved from not suing the crap out of everyone.
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
There is plenty of promise in pay-per-download music service. There is. It's only that NO ONE HAS TAPPED THAT POTENTIAL YET. The existing services are *ridiculous*. I am waiting for a service that will
1. Have a lot of selection. Not just the mainstream, not just the independants, not most of the bands. But rather just about everything. I really can't be bothered to figure out which services I have to subscribe to, to get a full view of music selection.
2. Will offer mp3 in high quality. Propriatory players do not cut it, I really don't want to lose all music that I have paid for if I stop subscribing. I don't like propriatory players (or even worse burners), but I do like my portable mp3 player.
3. Will not even attempt to sell streaming. Even if there is a lot of it for cheap. I have cable and still streaming can be laggy and it overloads the network. Local caches and file downloads exist for a good reason. (a radio-like subscription is exempt, I am talking about pay-per-stream model)
4. Will NOT charge me $10 or more a month. I don't want to pay for the priviledge of buying music. I don't want any pressure regarding how much music I should buy to compensate the monthly fee.
5. Charging $2 or even $1 per song is NOT CHEAP. Cheap is 25c to maybe 50c depending on the song. $1/song can easily bring to same $13-$15 per albom, but now I get no CD.
I know that several services cover *some* of the complaints that I have. I am not aware of one that covers all.
And before I stop bitching :), I'd like to point out the most amazing fact about all the existing services. If they have control over what you burn (i.e. not mp3 providers) they fix the number of tracks-to-burn WITHOUT an option to purchase more. That strongly remainds me of Soviet Union where I was born... In US, though, I thought that the seller WANTS you to buy more stuff and would never prevent you from doing so.