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New Napster Off To A Solid Start
Anonymous Superhero writes "From Wired magazine Napster 2.0 has a sleek design and makes exploring new music a pleasure. The most nagging problem? The confusing licensing issues. A review by Katie Dean." I haven't tried it yet - still using the iTunes store.
When the Apple Music Store for Windows went live, half the xp users on the internet had downloaded iTunes within 24 hours, it was the most talked-about event on the internet for days, and Apple had almost immediate statistics showing they'd sold millions and millions of songs in the first weekend.
Where are Napster2's such statistics? If they're remaining silent on that, what does that say about how much of a "success" they are so far?
Now that Napster 2.0 is out... I mean, it's out already? The only way I knew was those ads on the Onion. But that made it seem like a "coming soon" thing. Heck, it's barely made a ripple. You'd think if it were worthwhile, it would get more press than the press they merely recieve because of their famous name.
So are all the people complaining that you can't run your iTunes Music Store purchases on more than 3 computers going to overlook the seemingly worse flaws in Napster2, or whine all the louder?
The Napster kinks in licenses and stuff like that are only a sign of how the record industry still hasn't embraced this age of electronic media.
You'd think they'd be all into it, with the cost reduction for distrobution.
I would think I'm not the only person in the world who clicks OK whenever I see a contract or license. To me, that long-winded drivel has no hold on my time. If Napster is saying they will require my first born child as future payment for the services, then they'll have to come through me to get it, contract or not.
But that's not really what this is about. It's about record execs who haven't got the slightest idea how to integrate properly into a culture.
We are the culture... The people.
They (RIAA et al) are too busy trying to tell us that they are the culture, they are in control, when in fact that very notion of them having to tell people of this, is their undoing.
Each artist or group might have certain wishes to deal with Napster. Napster likely had to make concessions to appease the powers that be.
It's a side effect of a greater disorder. But does it make Napster bad? Prolly not.
So I quote an enthusiastic customer commenting on Napster 2.0's payment scheme, "F### THAT." He called his credit card and issued a charge-back on the service for false advertising.
You think Wired is a big fan of Napster2 because Napster and Roxio are both huge sponsers of the website as well as the mag?
As near as I can tell, Napster 2.0 is a store first and a jukebox second. Its jukebox tools are sorely lacking compared to iTunes, and its biggest omission is that it doesn't even include a CD ripper.
iTunes outclasses Napster in almost every way that counts. It would be more fair to compare iTunes to the new and improved MusicMatch, which added online music shopping about a month before iTunes for Windows was released, and compare Napster to BuyMusic instead.
Being a Canadian, I have no choice but to use piracy... there is no legal way to buy music online in Canada...
And HMV marks every CD they have as 'imported', and jacks up the price to $45. I have tried to buy music online from all the major new online music stores... no luck... so I'll continue to pirate (since I'm already paying a piracy tax on all recordable media, I'm legally entitled too... I love stupid politicians...)
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Well, they let you burn to CD, which is an inherently unprotected format. So you *could* burn to CD and turn right around and rip back to an unprotected format like MP3 (not that I would do something so blatantly illegal as this) ;)
BUT -- if I *WERE* to do something so blatantly illegal as that, I would consider it a huge waste of CD blanks. Which brings me to my question:
Most of us are familiar with programs like Daemon Tools that tricks your computer into seeing an ISO image as an extra CD drive. Has ANYONE seen a program/driver that does this process in reverse?
For example, it could be a program that tricks your computer into seeing an extra CD-R drive which is in reality just an ISO file creator. Nero and several other programs provide this kind of functionality, but only from within their application. Since Napster (and iTunes for that matter) only allows you to burn from their program, I figure such a program would have to work at the ATAPI level, not as a separate application.
I've scoured the net and haven't found any such program yet. I would love to code this sort of thing myself, but unfortunately I'm woefully ignorant of the particular Windows functions one would have to interface with to emulate a drive.
I figure there's enough open source gurus that mill around this site that SOMEONE might see this post and take it upon themself to code this sort of tool. Anyone with any thoughts/suggestions/flames can AIM me at SoyFeo408.