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Napster Tries Again
intheory writes "As it states on the site, The Cat is Almost Back. Napster, following a singificant delay, beleagured by legal and ethical rhetoric, reappears as a pay-to-play service. With some similarities to Apple's iTunes, will Napster regain its place as the premiere music distribution service? Additionally, the man behind the magic, Shawn Fanning, receives a thoughtful write up." I'm pretty wary of the new Napster, as the only thing it seems to share with its predecessor is the name.
Napster is dead, they surrendered to the RIAA and turned coat. The service is now strictly DRM, and is nothing more than the fulfillment of a record exec's wet dream. Refuse to fulfill the fantasy of the RIAA, boycott Napster. Nothing more to say here.
Slashdot needs a section for press releases instead of publishing them as actual news/story articles.
for old times sake, maybe a nice Metallica ditty:
MASTER! MASTER!
Master of "puppets" pulling strings..
I think you know where I'm going with this.
Napster was replaced with better systems a long time ago. Same name, different cat.
The real question is, does the new napster offer advantages over competing services, such as iTunes, and if they do, what are they? Anybody in the know here? Is it easy to preview content without paying for it? Do the downloads include DRM? Watermarking? How does this new Napster work, and why should we all be rushing to sign up?
MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
Sure it's got the name Napster, but Napster died a long time ago. It's never going to come back. The people that own it now don't realize that Napster wasn't popular because of it's name, but because it was FREE. Nobody is going to want to join Napster and have to pay for it. Apple's iTunes was only popular when it first came out. It was a big hype, and it's died off tremendously. There's no way that Napster will ever be as popular as iTunes because it doesn't have the following like Apple did with the Mac crowd.
Free > Cheap??? No way, surely Free Cheap.
And that is what matters. They charge for the equivilant of a 128kbps MP3 but offer it in DRM Windows Media format.
Sure, you can charge for a product if it is better quality than a free product (e.g., charge for a 320kbps MP3 when these are damn hard to get hold of on Kazaa etc) or offers better availability (the benefit of Kazaa and AudioGalaxy were that the had VERY rare tracks that were not available in the shops.
But the new Napster looks set to offer a mediocre crippled file format of a limited availability of songs that can be got for free, at a better quality level, for free on Kazaa, WinMX et all.
$9.95 for an album of 128kbps DRM WM files??? No way. The make a few pennsies, but only from competition to iTunes not from converting sustomers. The Napster brand counts for nothing.
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FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
Well, I think all of these online music pay-download services will, at best, receive only limited success - UNLESS/UNTIL they start offering more exclusive content.
If you think about it, people like receiving something tangible for their money. If you buy a piece of software or a music album in the store, you get a phyical piece of media you can take home and put on a shelf. Not only that, but it typically has some printed material too (instructions in the case of software, or liner notes and photos for music).
People will pay for "instantly downloadable upon receipt of payment" type software because it's typically stuff you can't buy the traditional way. (At best, they offer to mail you a copy for a few dollars more, and then you have to wait weeks to receive it.)
With music, people figure it's just as easy to run down to the local store and pick up the new CD as it is to sit there, waiting through an online download - and then, possibly have to use one of your own blank CDRs to burn it onto.
If artists started releasing new material ONLY on these services, then there would be much more incentive to use them.
On a similar note why design a site that is platform specific? There is simply no reason why a music delivery website (thats what all these services are anyway) needs to be designed for a particular platform. I guess the current excuse is media player integration or DRM format capabilities.
That just leads to the question why use DRM? I realize licensing negotiation in the main reason why, but people who request DRM don't understand the nature of propagation on P2P networks. Once a file is seeded from one source, that is it! The cat is out of the bag. DRM is simply ineffective at prohibiting sharing of files on P2P networks and as seen from the many copy protected CD's, its like putting a big flashing sign on the packaging saying "Crack Me, Trade Me, Please!"
There ya go. It's just PressPlay with a different face and a different owner.
Well, not quite. This Press release states that pressplay was the "foundation" for Napster, but from the information on their site, it sounds like Napster has a bunch more features, a different pricing structure, and a larger catalog of music. So yeah, it's from the same company as pressplay, and it shares some of the same software, but it's hardly "PressPlay with the Napster's name."
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
Napster has virtually NO brand name value with the demographic that counts, kids aged 15-25.
As an aside, the same kids knew Nirvana, but had no idea who Alice In Chains or Soundgarten were, and these were headbanging Korn/Limp Bizkit dudes. Sad... Actually, they didn't know who the President of the USA was, or the Prime Minister of Canada, so take heart, the cuts in education are working wonders.