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HP Dumped Napster for Apple
Pieter Townshend writes "Found on GMSV: 'In the days leading up to Napster's re-launch last October, a deal that would have put Napster links on millions of Hewlett-Packard computers went bad. HP withdrew from the agreement at the last minute, its reasons for doing so becoming clear three months later when it announced a surprise partnership with Apple to feature the iTunes Music store on HP computers and sell Hewlett-Packard branded iPod music players.'"
Based on the last line of the article "But he expects the business will mature as users realize it's cheaper to pay a flat fee for access to 500,000 tracks than to pay $1 a song."
The problem with the $15 a month is, I don't want to have to pay if I don't use it for a month. As it is I have spent less then $10 a month on iTunes store (and this month I might not spend anything), for me it has been cheaper. So if I look at it I have saved about $25 by not going with Napster. And since I am the only one in my circle at work that uses it, but every one here drinks Pepsi, I am getting free songs from my co-works (that or they would just trash the winning caps), but that is just a non-issue in the long run. With the iTunes store there is great integration into OS X and my iPod.
Also it does cost $.99 do download the song form Napster, so you have to pay for access then to download. From Napsters (www.napster.com) front page "Choose your own tracks for $0.99 each, or get the whole enchilada for just $9.95 per album."
Even though they're under new management, I wonder if Napster still has a bit of a stigma to them that gave HP cold feet?
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
AAC versus secured WMA, no big surprise here that HP decides to go with the non-MS solution.
Steve Jobs
Carla Fiorina
Steve Jobs
Carla Fiorina
Smart move, HP! Good on their part, good for Apple, and most importantly, good for the customer.
HP decided they wanted to sell rebranded iPod's, so they went with iTunes.
Which would make Microsoft unhappy and it did and for other reasons as well. That Microsoft took iTunes so lightly is a mystery.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I wouldn't suprise me if they went with apple just to get away from M$ dominance. M$ has twisted so many arms at HP, Dell and the likes over the years I can understand why they would stay away from M$ if they have the chance. What company wants their arm constantly twisted?
Evolution or ID?
... during the HP meetings. I can think of so many reasons to dump Napster in favour of Apple, such as: DRM, WMA, and cross-platform compatibility issues. All of these are, of course, aside from the fiscal reasons to favour Apple. From my /. perspective, I wonder which technical reasons, if any, came into play.
Equivalent to going out and buying a CD every month. With the rate of quality music being released these day, buying once a month is way too frequent for my taste.
Personally I have gotten most of the pre-Internet era music from Kazaa Lite, so paying $1 a song would suit my needs much better. Or I could just stick with Kazaa Lite some mroe.
They have almost got it right. I will shell out up to $49.95 a month when I can have access to just about every song ever released by a major record label and some of the independants.
Here's what I want.
1. On Demand Access - meaning I can login from anywhere and stream the music to my PC or internet connected device.
2. Download / Burning Rights - I want to be able to create cds that I can take with me and play in the car.
It's that simple, hell work a deal out with ISP's and let them offer it as a value added service that I can tac on to my account.
When the iTunes store came out, I went a little nuts, and probably spent more on music in 2 weeks than I had in 2 years.
Why? I could finally get that "one song I wanted" issue out of my system. Why by the entire "Queen: Greatest Hits" when I can't stand "Another one bites the dust", and just want "Bohemian Rhapsody"?
Once that was done, I slowed down. I'll still buy an album once every 2-3 months when the fancy strikes me for something new or when another band joins (I'm still holding my breath for the Beatles to get into the music stores, even though I'm starting to see black spots).
So why use a subscription service? Maybe if I could copy those tracks to my iPod (or some other MP3/portable music device) I could almost see the worth of it, but for $15 a month compared to $10 every 2-3 months, I don't see the worth of it.
Otherwise, I think that Napster, and other online stores like unto it, are pretty much in trouble. As the article states, they really don't have a revenue model. The songs probably barely make enough money for the bandwidth/server costs/customer support (meager though the latter should be), and Apple has made no secret that iPods are driving its profits. Sony has come out with their service with probaby superior encoded tracks, but selling them at $1.99 a song is a death kneal for all but the dedicated fans. At that price, I might as well just buy the CD and rip the songs into FLAC or something instead of wasting time downloading them from Sony.
In the end, I see Apple surviving, then as time goes on perhaps making a bigger chunk from the $0.99 per song track once they become the de facto standard (Apple? A dominate player in something? Shock!) and not having to rely so much on iPod sales. I see advertising based music sales doing pretty well - Coke and so on, but my money's on 12 months from now a lot of those services offering iPod compatible tracks through a licensing deal with Apple.
Of course, I could be wrong, but the trends so far seem to support it.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
One obvious consideration is the fact that Napster's name isn't exactly crystal clear in the public's eye. With all of the lawsuit stuff they went through back in the day, the name Napster has a lot of negative baggage with it. That alone would be enough to keep me from dealing with them.
The guitars sound good, now give me about 10db more on the cow bell.
If I were in HP's position, I'd certainly be disposed to selecting Apple as my partner over Napster. iPods are wildly popular, and iTunes is a going concern run by a company that is a profitable going concern. If I'm HP looking for business partners, I am certainly going to select the one who looks like the way of the future.
Say what you want about Apple, but they keep coming up with great innovations and products that are slick, well designed and quite useful. HP made a very wise choice here and I think they will make a handsome profit from it. Not to mention Apple being "validated" by someone in the WinTel clique, and having a WinTel producer OEM their gear and install their software by default. This is win-win for Apple and HP, and not bad for consumers.
Yes, there is the DRM issue, but is it realistic to think that there will ever be a time when there is no DRM on material like songs? While I wish DRM wasn't necessary, Apple's license is pretty good - use on multiple machines, use on multiple iPods and burn them onto MP3 disks. Perfect? No. Good enough for the vast majority? I'd say so.
Maybe HP and Napster will run into each other at some bar after one to many rum and cokes and for some reason Apple will be out of town on business or something... sparks will fly and BAM... 10 years later herpes!
So, what will HP call thier branded I-Pod? I supposed they could go with H-POD, but then people might get confused. "H? But H comes before I, is it the older model?" Then I guess there is HP-POD, which could be pronounced "Hip-Pod", but then Steve Jobs would be all, "Waitaminute, Apple is WAY MORE Hip, than HP! OK so we both started in Garages, but I sold my my VAN, to start the company, a VAN, man. And Woz had to sell his Calculator! His Calculator, man, one of those nice Programable HP ones... oh, wait. OK"
--- Ready to be modded down this time...
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
interface sucks, and their plug in for MediaPlayer 9 barely works, and fails completely with large fonts enabled. On the other hand, iTunes works perfectly, delivers on every aspect of the experience, from simple purchasing, sleek library management, fast searching and easy burning and sharing with authroized PCs and devices. Apple, as usual, delivers on user experience while solutions based on WMA deliver on inconvenience. I was a long time Wintel/Musicmatch user, but iTunes wins hands down. Buh-bye napster 2, buymusic.com, MusicMatch and whateve half-cooked dish MS will serve.
No company that has no source of generating any profit is going to exist. The only reason Apple can afford to do iTunes is because they are using it to sell iPods, which do make them money. Napster has no such device, and as such have no hope of staying in business for long. Roxio may have thought that they would sell CD burning software as a reuslt of Napster, but I imagine most people already have burning software that they are happy with.
I give Napster another 6 to 12 months, at best.
Personal, I am sad about the whole state of affairs in this industry. Basically, the computer manufacturers are choosing which programs the end user will use for listening to music, which antivirus software they will use. Each new computer that comes off the shelf is bundled with more and more ads and programs that monitor behavior.
The boxes coming out of the shop should stop being called "computers" and should be correctly identified as "ad delivery units."
Dumped Napster
Dumped-Napster
DumpedNapster
Dumpster
It all becomes clear.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
I think the legal troubles with Napster that's forever ongoing would scare anyone away.
They say this and that case is settled, but it's BS. You know those damn lawyers keep spawning like bacteria.
But he expects the business will mature as users realize it's cheaper to pay a flat fee for access to 500,000 tracks than to pay $1 a song
...well that's encouraging.
But then the question is, what happens as the users realize it's even cheaper to listen to the internet radio built into iTunes for $0 a month.
Okay, yeah, you can't choose exactly what song you hear next on internet radio. But generally, if I go "hey, I want to listen to X specific song", this indicates I'm going to want to listen to it again someday in the future. Unless I keep paying for Napster's streaming service for the rest of my natural life, I can't get that. Perhaps worst of all, last I heard not *all* of the songs Napster has up for sale are free to stream when you have the $15/mo service, and there's no way to tell which songs can and can't be streamed unless you've already paid for the service.
The $15-to-stream-from-our-library thing is a really neat business proposition, and I'd call it real innovation, but I just can't see buying it. I'd rather just stick with actually buying in some form the tracks/albums. And if you're only looking at buying tracks/albums, Apple's software works both on my macs and my PCs, and they seem to have a bigger and more indie-friendly library. I think I'll stick with them.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
But its Apple DRM. Which is good for some reason. Unlike Microsoft DRM, which makes baby Jesus cry.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/34980 .html
This is an interesting article. It appears that Compaq had a good device for tunes before being purchased by HP. THe question is why did HP go and outsourced tunes appliance when it already had one it purchased from Compaq? Lack of faith in Compaq? Then why did they they buy Compaq? Did they even know it existed? Then the question becomes did they even know what they bought?
Interesting...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I already own all the legit releases by the artists that interest me, but last time I checked I still need about 1,000 Bob Dylan shows just to get that part of my collection up-to-date. God help me when I start on the Grateful Dead or Phish!
Thank goodness for broadband & good ole FTP server software!
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Well, yes and no. Tracks you download from iTunes have DRM, but AAC in and of itself is an industry support subset of the MPEG-4 standard. Think .MP4...which is what some people have been calling it (in fact that was the default extension from my non-Apple AAC transcoder until iTunes came out, now it's .m4a).
WMV, on the other hand, is exclusively owned by Microsoft. It's also available in non-DRM flavors, but is only licensed for use on platforms that have been granted MS' okay. Which are few, basically just Windows and OSX, maybe X-box.
You need licenses for either format, but AAC licenses are available to anybody with available reference implementations. And I think -- think, mind you -- that AAC doesn't require a license for free-as-in-price encoders/decoders written by hobbiests. At the very least, you can get free decoders at www.audiocoding.com, open source of course.
So yeah, AAC's not open like Vorbis. But unlike Vorbis, the industry invested a lot of research into it and actually wants to use it. As such, AAC is heading for the same popularity as MP3, whereas WMV is looking more like, well, ASX. Vorbis will eternally be a hacker's tool because it doesn't have the visibility nor the clout of AAC in the industry...but as it's going to be eternally tweaked, it will no doubt continue to sound better at comparative bitrates.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Napster is compatible only with Win---s XP and 2K. Not even with 98 or NT will you have access to it. Meanwhile HP -- iPod by HP; Linux by HP? Maybe HP wants to diversify their products and is aware that relying too much on one technology will limit their business. IMHO HP has better business sense than Roxio, who targeted Napster only to part of 94% desktop users.
I've heard from several places that the iPods cost very little more than the plain hard drives that are in them, and thus have very low margins.
If so the business plan would be to run the music store without a profit, in order to sell iPods without a profit, in order to sell macintoshes. But that doesn't sound too smart, so I'd be willing to believe they do make money on iPods, and maybe what I heard only applies to the first models.
If anyone knows any more or less real numbers on Apples iPod margins, I'd be very interested to hear them.
As many pointed out, the first is certainly - They dont sell a player like iPod other's are: - User experience isn't at iTunes level - Napster history doesnt make it sound "clean" - They are not coming out with Pepsi caps :P
- Doesnt work on Mac, that is the platform of artists since its creation.
In my opinion HP doesnt want to break good relelations with Apple especially when they can enter in profitable business through Apple itself (last is the ITMS, but what about pro-printers?)
I know it was half-joke, but it's not that Apple DRM is good, it's that Apple's DRM policies are recognize fair use rights. The only serious complaint I have heard about the format you get from iTunes is that you have to burn to CD and then rip that to get MP3, which results in potential loss of quality. But the ausio CD you burn from the protected AAC file is a redbook compliant audio CD with no restrictions on it.
You'll probably mod me off-topic, but I walked into Target a few days ago, and I was walking by their electronics section and noticed that they are selling *Napster-branded* CD-Rs, CD boxes, media cases and such. The little cat logo and everything. I couldn't believe the irony.
No, computer manufacturers are choosing which programs they, as manufacturers, want to pre-load on a machine. It may or may not have to do with contracts or what the sales guys want, or even what the hardware developers want, or download what you want. The point is, it you don't like what's loaded on your machine when you buy it, go to any decent hardware retailer and build your own parts, it's all plug and play, no tech experience required. It's an afternoon project. Then load what you want. But a manufacturer can load whatever fit's their fancy.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Actually, Apple has lead markets before. Anyone remember when the IIgs was the premier graphics and sound platform?
You still see a lot of Apples in graphics and sound industries, but Apple's not been so great about maintaining their niche. [I mean, hell, Photoshop, one of the reasons for having a Mac in the 90s was one of the reasons people didn't want to switch to OS X, as Adobe wasn't going to make the jump right away].
When I worked in we development, I saw us go from 6:2 mac:pc user preference, to their current 1:12. [As most of us mac users left... and the manager [one of the two pc users] kept hiring non-mac people] . Okay, that might be a bad for empirical evidence.
The real question is going to be if Apple can keep the lead, or become complacent, and have someone else take the market from them.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
only the big PC companies...
Alienware and Apple do not do such things.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Nobody play the radio anymore?
And plenty of internet radio's offering great music for free anyway.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
You don't read at above a 3rd grade level, do you?
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
It was advertised that music obtained through the unlimited subscription model was only playable (without cracking the protection, violating the DMCA) while you were still a paid subscriber. This would have to imply you can't legally burn it to redbook audio CD.
Oh yes, because iTunes comes with lots of spyware and adware.
Um, how is this different from other large-ticket items, like your car? They decide what brand of radio, what type of transmission, what kind of tires are sold with each model. You're free to replace any of them you want when you've bought the car.
I think you're overgeneralizing from Microsoft and their vendors. With a Mac, yeah it comes w/ iTunes and Sherlock and whatnot. But you can use other programs without any negative consequences. Many people use other programs for a lot of things. Heck, you could set up to log directly into XWindows if you want and use no Apple software (other than their changes to work on the hardware, natch).
Now, Apple computers may not be easily configurable at purchase time as far as hardware goes, but they use industry standards and most pieces you'd want to replace you can. But all of their software packages are just that - software packages.
I have no idea what you mean by 'ad delivery units'. My computer is a tool that actually lets me get things done.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Their first business model was to encourage a generation to steal and leech money from the them as they stole.
Their new one is to get those same people to pay for what they have previously been encouraged to steal.
Born To Lose.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
iTunes is a Carbon app, not Cocoa. So, never, unless Apple rewrites it.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Or you could re rip to unprotected AAC and not lose any quality.
I have a shitty sig!
Come on, kids, this is a no-brainer.
As Steve and Phil told us at the very beginning, and as reality has proven - THERE IS NO MONEY IN SELLING DOWNLOADABLE TRACKS. At least, not for the reseller/portal provider. Apple knew that from the start, and told us as much. They would make their money from sales of the iPod, which would in turn drive more music sales, expand the library, and in turn create more iPod sales.
But the rest of the gang thought they could change reality and make some easy money where it did not exist to be made. Sure, if BuyMusic's million-songs-per-day fantasy had come true, they might have made a few bucks on that volume, but it didn't.
Carly is a smart woman, she figured this out before Napster did, and she made an educated guess that Napster would last about as long as Right Said Fred. (bet you don't remember them!)
So now im guessing any ipod I buy will be bloated with extra software to check the integrity of my mp3's, give me weather updates, and provide easy online customer support... just what I was looking for.
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My guess would be that they took a look at their own device and they took a look at what was already out there and then made a decision. Perhaps the device by Compaq was a total POS. iPods are the in thing right now. It's a great device. I shelled out over $600 for a new 40 GB iPod, a battery pack, the iTrip to broadcast music over an FM signal and a car charger and I couldn't be happier with my purchases. To be able to take your entire music library with you is a great thing and the iPod makes navigating a huge library of music an easy thing to do (deciding what you want to listen to, on the other hand, can be pretty daunting when you can choose from any CD or song in your library).
I think HP took a look at their device, took a look at the iPod and the integration of the iPod, iTunes and the iTunes Music Store and saw a superior integrated solution and decided to go with that. It was a good business move on their part. They'll sell more devices and they know that they are delivering a quality solution to their customers.
Apple is a solid company that has proven that they can deliver. Napster hasn't proven that it's going to make enough money selling music and subscriptions to stay in business. Apple can fund iTunes through sales of iPods. How can Roxio ever hope to fund Napster if the recording industry should decide to continue charging what it is presently charging for the foreseeable future? The short answer is that it probably can't unless it can sell enough monthly subscriptions. It's not clear at this time what is going to happen to Napster. HP could have some ticked off customers if they bundled Napster and then the company went out of business.
Actually, the newest versions of WMA DRM don't work on OSX.
- The Amazina Llama
Actually, its not Apple's DRM either. They license it from a 3rd party (Freeplay), who AFAIK is free to license it to companies other than Apple.
As others have mentioned iTunes relys on an API that is not available under GNUStep. Additionally, even if iTunes was Cocoa, and could thus be compiled using GNUStep, it would have to be recompiled to do so, AND for each architecture it ran on. iTunes is NOT open source, only Apple could recompile it. Many people misunderstand GNUStep, believing it is some form of Cocoa emulator and can run binaries built on a mac with cocoa, it cant. GNUStep is a reimplimentation (and an imcomplete one) of Cocoa and apps have to be built with GNUStep in mind.
Why would HP deal with Napster? Song distribution does not bring any money. In fact, Apple claimed (in an old article on TheRegister.co.uk; sorry for no URL) that their iTunes online store did not bring any profit. The money that they recieved for the service was just enough to cover their legal expenses. Apple has created the store so they could sell iPods and provide an efficient way of music distribution. By giving people a player and a source for music, Apple said, "Here is our player that you can buy for a lot of money, and here is a source where you can get the tunes. It is stable and everything works together!" And this is why the whole scheme worked out perfectly fine. Within several weeks Apple has distributed a substantial amount of songs, and guess who bought them? It is a perfect match for HP because they can profit from HP branded iPods and an existing (and stable) online distributor. For anybody in business it is a no brainer. What about Napster? Well, Napster was good when it counted. However, not is it completely useless, there are too many fish in the sea.
You don't think at above a 3rd grade level, do you?
If you look at the bottom-line numbers Dell is much more profitable. Although their gross (above the line) margin is much less, their SG&A costs per unit (or per revenue dollar) are much, much less than Apple's. The gross margin costs do not include development, sales or marketing (and administration). The marketing cost per unit for Apple's iPod is huge ... it's a fact of life of being a smaller vendor with much higher development costs. Dell's profit as a percent of sales is more than twice as high as Apple's. If you look at the stock prices over any period, it pretty much tell's the story.
Obviously Apple's not giving away to iPod design without getting something in return. For every iPod HP sells, they're going to have to give Apple a cut. So, HP won't be able to make as much profit per iPod as Apple does, but HP has much larger distribution channels than Apple, especially outside North America. There's a lot of interest in tapping emerging markets in eastern Europe and parts of Asia (especially China). By partnering with HP, Apple can get in on that action without having to spend money up front to increase production capacity and develop distro channels overseas, where it currently has little of either.
Apple could likely make more money in the long run by building overseas production and distribution capabilities, but it would require a huge investment up front. Apple does have lots of cash on hand (close to $5 billion!), but right now time is far more of a concern for them. They want to establish themselves in as many marketplaces as possible, as fast as possible, before competing MP3 products get there. It would be no use for them to spend all kinds of money breaking into new markets, only to find that some other vendor has been saturating that same market for six months already with cheaper (albeit less cool) competing product.
Good luck with the iTrip. In my opinion, it blows goats. The signal is weak (because it pulls from the iPod battery) and blocks the control for the remote control. Also, when I took it on a car trip a month ago, I kept hitting the tracks for it and it kept changing the damn broadcast frequency on me! I know they say it's not supposed to, but it happened to me far too often.
After that car trip, I moved to the Monster iCarPlay. It charges AND broadcasts through the dock port. Plus, since it's pulling the broadcast power from the car, it can be stronger. I was worried that the lack of broadcast stations (Monster's 8 vs iTrips 112? I forget) would really do me damage in a big city. Yet since I've had it, I haven't had to change the station once. The signal is so powerful, it pushes out every other signal. Lastly, I've now got my remote hooked up to my iPod when I drive so I can tuck the iPod nice and safely away.
It costs $80, but after the $40 for the iTrip and $40 for another charger... well, the math is damn easy.
fs
In theory, if you convert AAC to uncompressed audio and then re-compress at the same bit rate it will only try to throw away information that is already missing from the first encoding, and so there will be no loss in quality. In practice, this only works if both encoders use exactly the same psycho-acoustic model, which they probably won't (I believe the AAC encoder in QT is based on the Dolby Consumer CODEC, while Apple probably use the professional CODEC for iTMS music).
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