Slashdot Mirror
Napster Sells 5 Million Songs
mattmcal writes "CNet reports that Napster has already sold 5 million songs. The number is impressive despite lagging behind Apple which maintains a 56% market share according to SiliconValley.com. The integration with portable devices must play a key role in the download volume which Apple has also developed for the mini iPod."
"Gorog said he resists comparisons with other subscription services because of incongruities in the way subscriber numbers are reported. 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."
It's important to note that you still have to pay if you want to burn a song to a CD or otherwise use it outside of your computer. You do, however, get to use the song on up to three computers. Just a point of clarification because the article might lead one to believe that for a subscription fee you get unlimited downloads to use as you please and you really don't.
Keep Smilin'!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
According to the press release it is seperate. They've broken up the revenue streams in to categories, sold downloads and subscriptions are seperate.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. - February 23, 2004 - Napster(R), a division of Roxio (Nasdaq: ROXI), today announced that it has recently become the first PC-only digital music service to sell over five million downloads. The Company also announced that it has served hundreds of millions of page views since its late-October launch and has attracted over 1.5 million basic and premium members. Napster, which generates multiple revenue streams from a unique combination of single and album downloads, prepaid download cards, premium subscriptions and the licensing of its popular brand, is expected to generate at least $20 million in music sales in its first year.
Most people can't tell the difference between a quality MP3 and a CD; because they aren't listening that closely.
It wouldn't be too hard to study this, hook someone up to headphones, blindfold them, and play them identical excerpts from a CD and then MP3 and make them guess which was which; or just say which was "better quality."
What?
Usually I like to interject my own thoughts, but I will let the numbers speak for themselves:
4/28/2003 - iTunes Music Store for Mac launches
5/5/2003 - iTMSfM sells 1 millionth song
5/14/2003 - iTMSfM sells 2 millionth song
7/22/2003 - iTMS sells 6.5 millionth song
10/2003 - Napster launches
10/2003 - 300,000 Napster 1st week sales / 1.5MM iTMS sales same week
10/2003 - iTMS for Windows launchs (~13MM songs sold to date)
12/9/2003 - iTMS sells 20 millionth song
12/16/2004 - iTMS sells 25 millionth song (2.5MM/mo.)
2/2004 - Napster sells 5 millionth song (1.25MM/mo.)
On the bottom 1/3 of this page is a chart and analysis of the numbers too.
WARNING: My two cents -
Interesting that while Apple's numbers are much higher than Napsters', and Apple had to overcome the initial proof of concept that it would even work, so many REMAIN critical of the service.
Interesting still is that those same critics won't even spend a few dollars to give iTMS a *TRY* before they ink their mal-informed pens.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
1. The most expensive option (per track) is $10 for 40 songs per month. They show you the album cover, but that seems to be all you get.
2. The file format is lossy, but it's also VBR MP3, which can't be distinguished from CD quality audio by many people.
3. DRM is a bitch. That's why they don't use it. Also, much of their music is available to those outside of the U.S., which is something almost no one else offers.
So what's stopping you? I know that a lot of your "favorite artists" may not be on there, but wouldn't you like to support artists/labels that are willing to give you music on your terms? You can preview any track, and download your first 50 tracks for free.
(As an example, if you like synth pop, go to freezepop.net. Download the free MP3s. If you like them, you can get all 4 of their CDs for $32 [or buy them individually, of course.] Lyrics are on their site. This is the kind of band that gets my money.)
Don't like synth-pop? I can recommend something else. There are plenty of bands out there making great music who actually want you to hear it.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
I keep seeing this over and over. Everyone seems to have forgotten that Napster does have a hardware mp3 player. Samsung makes it, but it carries the Napster name, and you can bet they get a piece of each sale.
The "problem" with CD's is the 44.1 K sample rate. A 22KHz sound wave only gets represented by two bits, and with many of the crappy early digital encoders from the 80s, it might not even be sampled from alternate peaks of the wave.
Of course, the typical American geek's hearing pretty much ends around 16 KHz (at best), so you could do as CD zealots do, and insist that anything above that frequency doesn't really matter... except it does, because of the way it colors overtones, which are what gives most sounds their timbre. If you put a typical music-lover in a booth and make them listen to a double-blind test between a live microphone feed of a singer with piano accompaniment, and the same live feed where everything above, oh... say 17 KHz is filtered out, they will spot the difference.
However, most of people's concerns about the compromise of "the digital sound" turned out to be unfounded. Early CD players (and some of the cheaper ones today) sounded too bright and tinny as a result of inferior D/A conversion algorhythms.
When an LP is "cut", the low-frequency waves are dialed way down in amplitude, because otherwise you would have a grove that moves outside the stylus's range of motion! A pre-amp in the turntable (based on an industry standard established by the RIAA) boosts the bass back up again. Unfortunately, this electronic equalization results in massive, boomy, slightly unnatrual bass. Through the 70s, the stereos which did the best job of tweaking LP sources to sound natural gained the reputation of being the best playback equipment. Listening to a good-condition LP on a top-notch 70s "hi-fi" stereo is an extremely rewarding experience.
When CD players arrived in the early 80s, the same stereos that played back LP recordings with a "warm, rich" sounded bright, harsh, and shrill when playing back the same recordings on CD.
Over the years, better logic, better error-correction, and better playback components (as well as better digital encoding in studios) have all resulted in CD's that sound every bit as good as LP's.
In the late 80s and early 90s I was a total LP bigot, but to not change my position these days would be ignoring the evidence given by my own ears. Hearing "Dark Side of the Moon" on a $300 Rotel CD player through high-quality speakers is every bit as satisfying as hearing the LP on a $4000 air-baring, laser-guided turntable, if not more so.
So yea, CD's are not a bad compromise at all.
However, 99% of the time I'm listening to music, it's either on a portable player, in my car, or at my computer desk. In those environments, AAC is not only good enough, it's very difficult to notice the difference between it and the CD.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Been there done that.... trashed a box after downloading a few songs. The music wouldnt even synch to the iPod or back from. Couldnt use an iPod extractor to get the music back to the computer.
I emailed Apple iTMS and explained the situation. They tweaked some settings and my music was available for download and reauthorizing onto machines free of charge.
iTMS support said they normally do not support such a request, but since they responded within 1 hour of the original email request with a positive response, and within the another hour to mysecond email requesting that users should be able to deauthenticate machines from within iTMS, I think they would be open to assisting us blockheaded users.