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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."
Everyone else is an also-ran for the forseeable future, IMHO. It'd take a pretty big hitter (and Napster aren't big enough) to break it, with a significant investment. Frankly Apple are doing what the RIAA etc. should have paid someone to do a long time ago...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
They did not sell any to me. I was looking to buy some songs, but Napster's meagre catalog did not have them. They were only available via "outlaw" p2p.
If the RIAA is going to stem piracy and make money, they should actually take some effort to sell the music.
Sorry, but I'm still not turned on to the idea of online music downloads.
Sorry, but there has to be some more incentive for me to buy into the system.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the arguments are very old in this post, and it's all been said before. But nothing's being done, and I'm still not being converted over. Considering how much of a computer user I am, this is rather surprising.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Did each song generate 0.99$ or are these from the University contracts allowing all students to download at will. This is a huge difference. Does anybody have the contract details of the University deals? Is it a blanket fee or reduced charge per song? If students get 'free' unlimitted downloads and are all on T1/T3 lines, of course, 5e6 songs are easily downloaded. This is not surprising.
Hey, leave comments about my mother out of this!
Ok I'll try to look over the simplistic nature of your comment and explain why:
1. Ease of use - No more trying to track down songs and not being able to find them for months. If I see it on iTunes, I can have it right then. This is especially good for full albums.
2. Good quality - No more 56kbps mono files mixed with 192kbps stereo files. No more shitty rips with skips in them.
3. Uniform ID3 tags - Nothing pisses me off more than opening up an MP3 I just downloaded and seeing the album name or artist name is "++{Ripped by tHe eNfOrCeRz}++" or something equally lame.
4. Probably some other stuff that I can't be bothered to think of at this time.
In the end, it's worth it to me.
I disagree. Average three songs per user is a huge amount when considering that probably all of these songs are available via eMule and others for free.
Also the "7-day free trial" must have made a number of curious people register without purchasing anything. So I'd say an average *money paying* user has purchased an album's worth of music.
Don't fool yourself into thinking CDs have 'full dynamic range' of sound. CDs are a compromise, just like anything else. No, they don't have lossy compression, but they do have limited range. While the AAC files on Apple's music store use lossy compression, it's a much better technology than the 10 year old mp3 format -- and the recordings are made from the original tapes (they are not CD rips).
Recording sound is all about compromise. Don't base your judgment of one format over another based on a single word like 'lossy'. Listen to a few songs on the music store and let your ears be the judge.
The great thing about the heyday of Napster/Kazza/others was the great availability of rare recordings-- Live Rush stuff, really old Pink Floyd, hard to find CSNY. The record companies have made it so, once again, we are not "allowed" to listen to this great stuff.
I checked out Napster just today. $9.99 a month and $.99 for a download. Big whoop. If I want to buy an album its still going to be $10-$20, depending on how many songs are on it, but now I get to pay an extra $9.99 a month to have the privilege to download.
IMHO, if you only download a couple of songs without getting the album, you are missing some great traks (b sides). Of course, this is only true to real music, not the boy band and rap crap that is popular these days....
[FromTheMorning]
I view this pay-per-download thing just as a painful transition to a better world.
The technology has advanced enough to enable any Johnny B to make as many copies of digital anything as he wants. No RIAA, DMCA, CIA, or YMCA is going to stop the inevitable.
Wrong strategy: Instead of pursuing those who try to profit distributing fakes to people and are the big players costing the consumer as well as the author rights owner, the reseller and the producer big bucks, companies try to maximize their current net gain by restraining the choices of the regular Johhny B. As if the mainstream and biggest selling hits were immortal works of art that need to be treasured in vault rather than a day-to-day fad, only to be forgotten if not accessed in the same month.
Right strategy: Adapt. Face the fact that for a product to succeed, it must be cheaper and better than something one can-do-himself in his home.
The age of expensive CDs is over. Vynil was cheaper to buy than to copy, but people always liked to use cassete tapes for copies - who was nuts enough to pursue that?
Customer will, eventually, stop at some point to let themselves be squezzed out of every penny. Not to mention the third world who is quick to pick on some of the technology, but much less willing or able to follow royalty and copyright practice.
Prices will have to fall, be it media sets or download options. High prices and limited access are only a road to oblivion. Furthermore, new inventions may well push current technology out of the market.
No one's forgotten that, because they never knew about it in the first place. People do know about the iPod. See the difference?