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The Nine Lives of Napster
lisa langsdorf writes "There's an interesting article on BusinessWeek.com today about Napster's race to gain greater market share in the music download business. According to a recent study, Apple has 75% of the pay for music download market, but Napster could soon gain more market share due to a new upcoming market push. BusinessWeek says: 'Napster could start to increase market share in the more profitable business of selling monthly subscriptions, where customers can listen to -- but not own -- as many songs as they want each month for $9.95. While Napster is far behind RealNetworks' Rhapsody service, AOL's MusicNet, and others, it's taking the lead again in the old Napster's stomping ground: college campuses.'"
How a monthly subscribtion eventually filters down to the artists? It seems such a system would make it hard to do the "for each time a user listens to X's song they get hit with a bat by the RIAA" analysis.
Because as we all know if you can listen to it...then you can record it :) Not that i would do such a thing...but im sure somebody here can figure out the end run on this model :)
. I love the sound of burning women and screaming rubber....
..but I am entirely uninterested in NOT owning my music. I like Apple's model a lot. And, thanks to Pepsi, I've even bought some songs from them now and it works wonderfully. If I had a job, I'd probably be buying music from them on a regular song-by-song basis. But I don't. So for now, I use bottle caps with codes that my girlfriend gives me. :-)
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Now that /. has given away the secret (marketing on college campuses) Napster won't be able to get that market share after all! Oh, woe is Napster! ;)
libertarianswag.com
While Napster is far behind RealNetworks' Rhapsody service, AOL's MusicNet, and others
It's gotta hurt pretty bad when Real is considered better than you!
Why all the hooplah about all these "me-too" online music downloading businesses?
I mean, I know you all are stiff for Apple, so anything they do just has to be covered as innovative and cool. But Napster is not napster anymore, the name was merely bought.
Big fricking deal.
I just dont care that the new Napster is going to start a big marketing push. That's what businesses do, duh.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If it ain't free; it ain't for me!
You should be able to just use beam back to... well... beam back the streaming media (if that is in fact how napster does it) onto your computer. You can dowload it at www.freshmeat.net.
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Can you simply subscribe to napster and stream the content to disc, thus illegally "buying" it? It's not that I want to do this, it's just that I would imagine that if people cannot do this (or have to go d2a2d to do it) then their market will always be much smaller than the stores, if however you can rip off the content then I imagine many users will go that route as a cheaper way to get their hands on music that's slightly more legal than simply going peer to peer. Come to think of it, can you just timeshift the napster content legally? I presume not as you can control it's delivery but ...
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Napster could start to increase market share in the more profitable business of selling monthly subscriptions, where customers can listen to -- but not own -- as many songs as they want each month for $9.95.
Like most people, I buy around 4 - 5 CD's a year. This totals about 50 - 60 bucks. For me to pay $10 per month, I would have to own the music to justify the $120 per year cost.
I believe that most people, much like myself, would like to own their music. I want to put it on any device I want. I want as many copies as I need. And, I want it available anytime, anywhere. When these companies figure that out, then they will start making money from me. Until then, I will continue to buy the 4-5 cds I deem worthy.
"BEHOLD, CORN!!" - Dr. Weird, ATHF
I will not buy from these places. I have no problem with paying for music, it's that I don't want DRM. If any of these places where to sell me music without drm, I would buy it.
Napster the music-sharing service used to be cool. Now, it's nothing more than a Brand Name. That's not nine lives, that's just someone profiting off of an established name. Sad.
You probably shouldn't click this.
Hmm, sounds like a motto for catster, dogster's competitor
Unsubscribe, you lose all 'rights' to play?
Dont do DRM.
I believe that soon Napster will regain it's lost mindshare of the worlds music afficianados and become the pre-eminent supply of music in digital format.
HA HA HA I am just kidding!!!
yea just keep throwing money at it and it can be successful. They keep doing these things were colleges buy it for their students and such. Screw that, my costs are high enough as it is and I really dont give a flying fuzz about helping the RIAA out. They can kiss my ass and keep their music.
It's great to see Napster trying to come back after the "revolution" it stired up, but let's face it, Napster is no longer a cutting-edge technology or concept. They are only trying to catch up and make some dought. This is not bad, it's just not that cool anymore.
But Napster is not napster anymore, the name was merely bought.
I'm glad someone has finally pointed this out. The "new napster" is actually run by Roxio, the folks that make EasyCD Creator for Windows and Toast for Mac.
Now if only the Nero guys would show us what a real music store could look like....!!
I couldn't disagree more with the statement:
:("
"Face it, there is no room for Napster anymore. The era of pirating and sound liberation, where Napster ruled (well, AudioGalaxy did for me) is over.
Pir8's are alive and well - thank you very much!
While Napster is far behind RealNetworks' Rhapsody service, AOL's MusicNet, and others, it's taking the lead again in the old Napster's stomping ground: college campuses.
Wow! I never knew there were so many ways to use your hard earned money to buy poorly encoded music. BTW, are the college campuses they speak of from the days of the free and illegal Napster or the new and legit one?
From the article:
Penn State University and the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music intend to offer free Napster subscriptions to thousands of students in coming months. These are just pilot programs, and Roxio granted big discounts that will keep profits negligible at best, say insiders. But the hope is that the students will become paying customers for years to come. "Smart," says Kenswill.
A college endorsing and paying for a private entertainment service of this sort? This is a school of music, but billing Napster as academic resource seems a little questionable. Unless I miss my guess, Napster's unlikely to have deals with the world's great bastions of classical music performance. Another example of an academic institution adopting a policy of private endorsement.
Posted Anon for obvious reasons.
Why should I even bother with any of these pay for download schemes? Lets be serious here.
They dont provide any CONSUMER Benifit over the "shady" p2p services.
They give me no incentive to switch. The quality of the files are oft worse then what i can get illegally. You pay for something, and dont get anything tangible in return. The selection is severly limited. And there are file restrictions.
There is a very easy way to fix this whole problem. Put up a "donate" button on artist's websites so I can fling them a few bucks.
Unfortunatly, due to politics, this is mindboggingly complex. Im getting really tired of putting up with half-assed efforts that are simply a mediocre nod to the population.
Remember, we are fighting with people who think that free, instant, worldwide access to much of the art created in the past 100 years is a BAD THING.
ugh. just ugh.
Half the fun of discovering/enjoying new music is turning your friends on to it. For me anyway ...
I understand the need for these distribution companies to cling to the idea of control and taxing our enjoyment habits, but they need to dig deeper when they think about a possible business model that will work for the artists, themselves, and most importantly the consumer ...
You RENT an apartment, you BUY music...
I'm now over 250 song purchased from the itunes music store and still think its the closest thing to digital music nirvana there is.
Very liberal DRM (that still protects the artist), cheap, Incredbile round tripping between itunes software and the ipod and the list goes on...
Scott "how's buymusic.com doing now?" Blum can kiss my itunes using behind. It still cracks me up when i think of the shameful buymusic.com launch and the quotes that were attributed to him....
There is nothing Napster-like about 2.0, NOTHING. I think someone should sue them for false advertising, because Napster is supposed to be synonymous with free.
I want 2D games back.
How does free subscriptions at two universities translate into "it's taking the lead again in the old Napster's stomping ground: college campuses."
Hell, I had an inch-thick binder full of 9-point type with just a few day' worth of 'classic' napster download logs "back-in-the-day" at a teensie campus... the lead is a long way off.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
...should campuses be buying music subscriptions for their students? Do they buy magazines, etc? Nope. I see things like that and then see the universities plead poverty....
Napster could start to increase market share in the more profitable business of selling monthly subscriptions, where customers can listen to -- but not own -- as many songs as they want each month for $9.95
Of course it's more profitable -- you're tied to the service by an umbilical cord, and as soon as you stop paying, you lose all access to the music, no matter how much you've paid up to that point!
There's a reason Americans are so big on the home buying thing: they don't want to pay rent for the rest of their lives.
Let's do some math: $10/month = $120/year = $1200/decade. So if after paying my 1200 bucks, I decide to stop subscribing -- or Napster goes out of business, then I have, let's do some more math: squat! No music for my money.
And of course, my subscription won't work at work -- my employer won't want the bandwidth cost of my streaming --, and it won't work on my portable, because it'll all be DRM'd streams.
If I want to listen without owning, there's this thing called radio. Since that's almost wholly dominated by Clear Channel Homogeneity, I re-phrase: Internet radio.
But no way will I subscribe to ephemeral music encumbered by Digital Restrictions Management.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
...as long as they're on the pre-approved "ok for streaming" list, and no you can't see this list before you buy a subscription.
I honestly have to believe that Napster's college program is overrated. Woo hoo, I am a college student and I get to stream songs but I can legally save them (sure there are ways to save the stream but let's save that discussion for another day.) So I stream one song and think it's pretty cool but damnit, I have to pay for it "again" and it will only be in the WMA format.
I say again because don't believe that I haven't in some direct or indirect way contributed monetarily to the ability to stream songs. What if I am a student on campus that doesn't want this service, is the university going to let me out of paying for it in some fashion? Or is this the new recreation activities fee that students have to pay for in addition to the one for the gym that most don't take advantage of?
Count me as not sold on the viability of Napster.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
no, seriously, if you're going to go with a cola, Pepsi sucks. it is sugary. Sierra Mist is good. I've only bought one since the promotion and it was a winner, but I accidentally threw the cap away. Oh well, I was going to give it away anyway. And I don't believe I would have owned the song in a useful and perpetual way anyway, without breaking the encryption code. I want to be able to listen to my music on whatever device I want, no matter what OS it's running.
Digital-analog-digital sucks. I have done this with real rhapsody just for the heck of it. and the audio quality is far from good. besides you have a lot of time in your hands to play each song you want and record it in the background.
It's called Napster 2.0, not Free 2.0.
And the fact that it's "2.0" should tell you enough about the differences with the original Napster.
So why is this modded informative?
1. Although Napster was shut down, I know a large number of people who still remember it fondly. (My own father particularly loved Napster, and was enraged that it was shut down.)
2. Having to keep track of payment will complicate the new Napster.
3. Napster's strength was in it's population. Unless they can get a big following, they'll be rather useless.
If I had to gamble on it, I would bet 1 to 4 against this new Napster.
Why would I pay for something I don't even download for free? The abysmal quality of the generally shared (legal or illegal) music files only takes one or two listens before you'd rather go listen to a Mariah Cary CD.
Even the MP3s/OGGs I've created myself at the highest quality levels possible are still noticably shy of true CD quality in many cases, and that level of quality is rarely available via downloads. The only reason to have them is to carry large amounts around with you, to play on largely sub-standard audio equipment (even my car audio shows the shortcomings of some of these files, but the lure of 100+ songs on a CD for a 4 hour trip and the high background noise of freeway travel make this choice acceptable). Now if they only made a car DVD player that played WAVs....
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
iTunes has streaming music for free anyway. Frankly, 9.95 a month for songs I can't download and listen to when I want is about as good as listening to the local radio station.
-A
It's been 3 1/2 years since napster was shut down -- with a 4-year college, that means that anyone who used the old napster will be graduating out in about 2 1/2 months. This doesn't leave a lot of time for the new napster to get traction on the coattails of the old, especially when iTunes has been out since before the beginning of the school year.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Wait wait...
Napster wants to charge X amount of dollars a month for them to stream music to me? "Music on Demand"? But, I don't own the music... meaning I can't put it on my discman, my iPod, or my home stereo?
I don't get how it could be successful...
"While praising Apple's service, analysts caution that its success won't necessarily transfer completely to the Windows environment." - John Borland, c|net news, 7/28/03
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
because comparing Naptser to iTunes in the pay download market versus the pay stream market is moot. If you, Apple has a marketshare of 0 in the pay stream market. Basically, Apple says "so what" to that. I am happy with the ability to listen to radio streams and not rent music. Napster can increase their marketshare all they want in the pay stream business because in the end, I think that market will dry up after people realize "Hey, I am basically paying for selected radio."
Good luck Napster on that one because you are going to need after losing $15 million last year. Here's to hoping that you find many more suckers in the pay stream market.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
This sentence is so dumb and useless.
"According to a recent study, Apple has 75% of the pay for music download market, but Napster could soon gain more market share due to a new upcoming market push."
In other words, Apple is beating the crap out of Napster right now, but Napster might do better. They might do better because there are only three options, do better, do worse, or stay the same...
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
Can't "own" the songs? Not like we own them now..
Besides, it's nothing one of these babies couldn't fix.
S
This is a case where the free market will decide.
If enough people are willing to pay for that kind of service then more power to them but I for one will not.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
"DRM turns computers against their owners. I don't want a Disney security guard sitting in my living room watching my every move."
- Ian Clarke, creator of Freenet
The whole napster on campus thing is silly. Only very long in the tooth graduate students remember napster at it's prime. Why would youngsters feel any bond with napster?
Has it been that long? God, I'm getting old.
Looks like this story was clearly/obviously submitted by a PR firm.. Is /. now a mouthpiece for corporate PR?
OK, I'm good so far. As of this point in history, the RIAA is making $0 additional dollars out of Internet downloads. Other services are trying out, like MP3.com and emusic.com and so on, but that's not helping the RIAA. Not that I'm terribly concerned about them myself, but I'm sure they are concerned about themselves.
So then this happens:
As we all know, subscriber services have pretty much crashed and burned. And this is the part I don't get:
Why do those who prefer subscriber services keep trying to tell everybody else how great it is? Since Rhapsody and Real Network's service came out, it's been "the consumer will realize how great our service is, and they will come to us with great shedding of tears of joy, and we will ease their music needs with our streaming servers!"
Except that people aren't rushing to subscriber services. Most of these services have just not been doing well.
Moving on in history:
So let's get back to Napster 2.0.
So that's where we are. I know Micorosft likes Napster, and wants them to do well to peddle WMA to the world, and then there's the whole college thing.
And once those college students leave the dorms? Will they say "Hey, let's pay $10 a month to Napster to keep listening to music!", or will they say either:
A. I haven't had to pay for music in years, and now I can't listen to my old stuff. Streaming music stuff - I'll just download it off [insert P2P service here].
Or:
B. Well, guess I'll have to buy the song. May as well use the iTunes store - it works with my iPod.
Napster doesn't really have a "value added" reason to use them over iTunes. Sure, there are WMA devices out there, and I'd be surprised if the average man on the street can name you 1. No, not geeks - I'm sure I'll get calls of the "Archon Mega Zord Power MP3 player!" - average man on the street. Ask them what MP3 player works with Napster, and you'll either get blank looks, or "iPod", and then you'll scream and say "those only work with the iTunes store, you nitwit!"
And then they'll say "Oh. Well, I guess I'll go there instead."
Apple's got it all d
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
WHO CARES ABOUT THE NEW NAPSTER! the ipod is currently the best mp3 player on the market and itunes is an excellent piece of sofware. I'm all for competition, but there are other services besides napster.
I saw prepaid Napster cards in the local conevience store the other day. Scary...
Why does a "market push" usually occur when your food is so bad you have to change your company name or you raise your fees becuase your stock tanked? I'd say that's what's happening here
too...
Am I just stupid, or is there some benefit to paid streaming? Exactly what added value do I get for $120/year over the hundreds, nay thousands, of streaming music stations I can get off the internet now?
Is there some advantage to picking my own songs (ie I'm doing the DJ work here) versus logging into an all-Blues or all-Jazz or all-whatever streaming audio feed and forgetting about music 'till I shut down?
Or does Napster offer an option to do that grunt work for you (which makes them exactly, and I mean exactly, the same as a free streaming radio station)?
Sorry, I just don't get it. My $120 still buys 6 to 12 CDs a year (depending on whether they're new releases or older albums) and I can have my choice of internet radio stations, many of whom broadcast at 128 kbps.
At least with the iTMS you can keep the songs; although I still bristle at paying anything for a lossy compressed version I'm not naeive enough to think that it's not good enough for many people.
But streaming music is free, free, free right now. What am I missing here?
What has Roxio innovated?
As far as I can see they bought all their products, most of those products were already second and third hand. How many owners did Toast have before Roxio?
After they bought MGI they continued to slash and burn the R&D and programing departments until now all the old products come as one title. Boy that's innovation.
They are an example of the software dinosaurs that died long ago, Whoever put up the bucks for "Napster's Marketing Push" will learn the hard way. (Big secret; Audio out -> Audio in)
Apple is not winning the game with a superior song catalogue, superior interface, or the ethereal Apple "coolness" factor.
They are winning because of the iPod, the slickest portable digital audio player in the game.
It's the hardware.
If I could go to Best Buy and browse from a selection of six to eight portable digital audio players that worked with Napster's DRM, and these products were reasonably affordable and well designed, Napster's bottom line would be much better off. Much better off if Napster got a kickback off every one sold, that is.
People do not like having audio files they can only play on their PC, or (in the case of Apple) having to purchase an absurdly expensive player. Apple could blow the lid off the maket if the mini iPod had been $149 with 128 megs of RAM and memory card slots instead of getting stuck in MUST-HAVE-INTERNAL HARD DRIVE tunnel vision.
Jobs: How about this- I already buying memory cards for various electronics in my home. How about if I can use them in my new iPod as well? Must everything be proprietary? And must my audio player look as though it must be held by a blonde 17 year old girl rollerblading down the boardwalk in hotpants whilst sipping a double shot swiss water process half-calf soy milk mochaccino? Cool is only worth so much more, you know. If Napster had a line of solid players and relaxed their DRM restrictions a little they could knock iTunes out of the box.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
How low can they go? That is the BIGGEST turn off, SPAM.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
As much as they keep trying to reinvent themselves, it's obvious this is a company that is just trying to keep its head above water. It's not even really Napster anymore, and I think people realize that. Whoever owns Napster 2.0 mistakenly thought that Napster was a cultural icon, when in fact, it was simply the first in a string of "free music" programs. People who want to pay for the music use iTMS; it works better, has more name recognition and is "cool," unlike Napster. All Napster really had was its brand name, and now that brand name is associated with "selling out," which pretty much dooms any product based on an image of "cool" to a short lifespan.
People would rather download it for free but avoid it because they're afraid of getting arrested.
" it's taking the lead again in the old Napster's stomping ground: college campuses."
i'm surprised people haven't realized that college students don't have money. the reason why napster was so popular with college students was because of their broadband connection and because it was free. free (and illegal) methods spread like wildfire on campuses and so long as there's a cheaper or free alternative, i highly doubt napster will become as popular on campuses as it has in the past if at all.
are you that dense? Lots of people happen to use encyclopedia or other academic resources.
The comparison is that most of these services are being moved online and available for a subscription fee. Yes, good journals charge a FEE to read them online.
It is simply more convenient to get what you want ON DEMAND than to have to actually buy paper copies of various journals, encyclopedia, etc and maintain a personal library.
Not insightful? What does that make you, uneducated?
I buy only vinyl, which has exceptional sound quality and very light DRM. So when i want to have some formality i dig out my 12" of AFX or whatever and listen to that. /worker) into AAC.
:D
For most of the time I just listen to my MP3s which i download with DC++ which are also DRM free. Or, i rip CDs i copy from Tower (via a friend
but always CDs that I own on vinyl
DRM free, and the best of analouge and digital sound.
This is also something that I think is very cool, i get the handyness of MP3s/CDs but without having to pay cash for CDs, which are stupidly overpriced pieces of plastic. If you sell your entire CD collection of a few thousand CDs, you'll be lucky to get 10% of what you paid for them. Vinyl however does hold its value very well, and is generally a better bet for long term investments.
the hassle of putting on (or changing sides) on your vinyl is foregone if you have a copy on MP3 to though, for when you just want to have some background music and hardcore sound quality isn't neccesary.
We don't have the hallowed halls of 7-11 here in the arpit of Florida. We only get Tom Thumb, Suwanee Swifty and Jr's Mini-mart out here in the sticks (that would be the state capitol, mind you). No slurpees for us!
Well, how about these analogies:
Why would anyone pay to go skydiving? After the jump is over, do you still own that jump and can you make it again for free? No. After eating a meal at a nice restaurant, do you own the meal and can you eat it again? Not unless you are some kind of twisted sicko. Why go to a concert? You can't (legally) repeat that experience for free.
Music in the format Napster is selling is an experience, something that can't really be owned. You pay to enjoy music. What have you to show for the $1200 you paid for 10 years worth of music? Ten years worth of enjoyment. I've spent WAY more than that over the course of the past 10 years buying music. I have 300 cds sitting in my car right now (go ahead and steal them, as they are legal backups of the originals at home). This $10/mo guarantees you can listen to any freakin cd you want. I listen to music for 8hrs a day at work; that would be a lot of different artists to try out. Spending $120 on iTunes gets you 120 songs, or about 10 albums. With Napster I can get roughly 5 albums per DAY, or 1500 albums over the course of a year for that $120.
Now, to why I won't pay for this service... I spend a lot of time driving and need music in my car. If I can't stream the Napsterified songs to my car, then why would I pay for it? This is the realm of iTunes. The reason I won't pay for iTunes is that I already have 300 cds, so I can either pay them for the digital versions or spend the hours and hours to digitize them myself.
P.S.
At least 2/3 of my 300 cds were bought used or from non-RIAA companies
IANAL, but I play one on
If you're going to steal someone else's joke, you could at least give credit. A Penny Saved
...Buffering.... .. Buffering...
Your connection has been lost.
You RENT an apartment, you BUY music... I'm now over 250 song purchased from the itunes music store and still think its the closest thing to digital music nirvana there is.
You don't own that music. What you get from iTMS is a long license to play that music on a narrow range of hardware device. You are buying a subscription, only instead of a monthly fee you pay a one-off license fee.
Don't believe me? Try reselling what you have "bought".
Da Blog
If you spend $16 to buy a CD, you get a couple of good songs and a bushel of filler -- but the same money at the iTunes Music Store will let you cherry-pick more than enough good tracks to fill your own mixed CD. Or, you can pay Apple for the album, plus maybe a few extra songs.
Burn your Apple tunes to a CD, and you're in business.
What's not to like? Sure, some will scoff that the quality is better on a CD, but I'd much rather get a little noise in tunes I want than crystal-clear reproduction of all the rubbish it took to pad out an EP into an album.
Unsubscribe, you lose all 'rights' to play?
Apple features lock in as well. You stop buying iPods or Apple technology, you lose all defacto rights to play what you "bought" - which you have really just rented from Apple for a long-duration-subscription once-off license fee.
Da Blog
I'm not that familiar with iTunes, but don't you have to have a credit card or PayPal account to use it? One nice thing about Napster's service is that a 14-year-old can easily use the service without mom's credit card. I see the Napster "gift card" things *everywhere* now, even at gas stations and the like.
...that's the point. Before you start talking about your 'rights', compare it to say Netflix. You don't get to keep a permanent copy of every movie you get that way either, not legally at least. If you quit your subscription, you have to return the discs and lose all 'rights' to play. This is essentially the same "unlimited rental" scheme. You have a problem with that?
I don't have a problem with the business model as such, only the obese abomination that is DRM. The real slogan should be "Trusted computing - because we can't trust YOU, you dirty pirate!" Think about it - they want to make every electronic device in the world to obey their command - not yours. It's the biggest waste of resources in computing ever, in my opinion.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"...where customers can listen to -- but not own -- as many songs as they want..."
Isn't this the model RIAA already has in place for CD-based distribution?
"Sound Liberation"? I call it copyright infringement, and so does the law. Contrary to what you may read here, downloading music you haven't paid for is not a struggle for liberty. It's people being too cheap to pay for what they want.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
This new napster will NEVER be as good as the old one. College students generally don't have much money or don't want to spend there money on music.
Why buy the music when you can get it for free and it sounds just the same.
Also is this subscription music like streaming audio, if so what kinda quality ?
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How the FUCK does that work? I buy something I want it to reflect just 2 little things: What I need is simple, to be able to play the media I just paid for. Where ever I fucking want. Period.
Fair market value? We've been jacked around for years by record companies asking ourselves why as recording media prices continued to fall retail prices continued to increase. Well this is just fucking ridiculous. It doesn't take a genius to see the cost advantages of using the internet as a delivery medium, but low and behold, prices haven't dropped drastically to reflect the new and economically improved distribution method. Surprise.
The only reason I can fathom that we have accepted iTunes and others unrealistically high prices is because the technology is so new. Its novel and convenient, well, its not really convenient. I hope that this market corrects itself soon. Buying music off the internet doesn't really make a lot of sense, or it wouldn't, accept you get more really product for you dollar right now in a format that can easily be transcoded and used in a variety of different places (aside from your iPod).
Quack, quack.
Why does Michael want Napster to "plz-die"?
This guy is way out there
Why should campuses be buying music subscriptions for their students?
Purely legal reasonS.
Instead of X University getting lawsuits because they "allow" their university to be nodes of Kazaa or their IPs have been found downloading music, they are being strongarmed by the RIAA* to purchase their way out of a lawsuiT. "Buy this product, so your students don't pirate, and we can't sue yoU."
* RIAA, et. al.
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
Because there are still bitter Slashdotters who hate that a program that let them conveniently pirate every album under the sun was taken away and replaced with something legitimate.
.rar or .zip files of an entire album ripped from the same source, usually at high quality (192 or better). Movies, software, you name it. You want it, you can get it, and fast.
Napster was good for just grabbing a random song here and there but sucked ass for getting a whole album. Each song would be encoded by a different person at different quality levels and sound levels. I'm not bitter that napster was taken away - it just meant that something better would be here that much sooner.
First it was kazaa, which had the same problem as napster in terms of downloading a whole album, but you could also get movies and software from it. It also had multi-source downloads, so everything was sure to be on your computer in the blink of an eye (supposing you had broadband of course). That was really cool.
Then along came edonkey and bittorrent. You can get anything you could ever imagine from these two programs, including
The original napster was a good first step, in fact I would say it was revolutionary because of the programs it inspired, but compared to what we have today, it doesnt hold a candle. I tried out the "new" napster and think it is well done, in fact I actually like it better than iTMS, but anything that restricts my use of media is not something I'm going to pay for.
Joseph?
you get a nice capture of all your PC noise, which even for a high quality PC is fairly noticeable. You can stick in your headphones and crank up the volume with nothing actually playing, and havea listen to your capacitors charging and transformers humming.
One better solution would be to use something like Rogue amoeba's "Audio Hijack to 'capture' the program playing the stream and get a noise free high quality MP3 of it directly. the problem is Hijack is for OS X only, and Napster have decided to snub Mac users by keeping thier service windows only. I am sure there are similar programs though.
Your current ability to create derivative copies of the iTMS product and record them onto other media does not give you the right to listen to those derivative works when and if your right to the original source material has passed. Consider also that a future revision by Apple of the licensing terms may invoke technological barriers to your ability to create derivative copies of the iTMS product. Or try this: currently there is a small but definite quality loss through the transcoding process. Apple may decide in future to increase the quality loss for the AAC->CDDA process. Where are your "rights" to listen to your music on a wide range of players then?
You need to think about what a "subscription" means. Think different! Just because you pay up-front (instead of amortizing the cost over a periodic interval of payments) doesn't change its nature. If I paid a sum of money up-front for a Rhapsody subscription, and my license term was for the length of time the software player remained on a specific PC, would I be buying a "subscription" or a "license"?
Subscription: an arrangement for providing, receiving, or making use of something of a continuing or periodic nature on a prepayment plan.
Reselling CDs might be a pain for you, but consider someone else who might have "purchased" several thousand dollars of iTMS product. Afert several years she wants to sell the iPod with attached product to someone else. If she had CDs she could enjoy right of resale and obtain a fair market value. Because she does not own the iTMS products, but only owns a non-transferrable license, she can resell the iPod but cannot, legally, assign any value to the contents of that iPod with respect to the iTMS product.
Finally, you use rude words a lot. And a rather pathetic ad hominem insinuation about illegal narcotics, framed within a class-specific drug format denigration. Are you always this angry?
Da Blog
This actually is enticing to me because I am sure that the quality of Napster's songs would be better than those of the major illegal P2P music trading networks.
True you can buy the songs from Apple at a dollar apiece, but this way would be cheaper (especially if you got something like 200 gigs of songs). Also this way the record companies (and hopefully the artists) get paid- though not as much as they would like. Napster could benefit from getting a lot more subscriptions (and the market share it implies) which can keep it afloat that much longer. As far as the legality of it, "I didn't do it" combined with "I didn't sign anything" with a "everbody's doing it" on top!
Open Source Sushi
"The people who want a constantly changing selection of songs, or to listen to stuff that was released just the other day, already have something to satisfy those urges - radio."
What planet do you live on? Constantly changing selection? Try 40 songs in hot rotation played every 2 hours with another 60 that are no longer in hot roatation mixed between the 40 to add variety over the course of a day. I don't even listen to radio because they just want to jam the crap the RIAA is paying them to play down my throat.
I agree with your post, except for the Apple stuff. You can only move them 3 times right? So eventually they will die as well.
It's Digital Rights Management - or, better, Digital Rights Misappropriation, not Digital Restriction Management. It is, after all, your fair-use rights that the music industry wants - the restrictions aren't managed exactly, but are a method for the music industry to appropriate your fair-use rights (or get you to give them up without knowing it).
Digital Rights Management is accurate - the problem is of course that the music industry wants to "manage" rights that don't belong to them.
although I liked the talk station better.
Some people will shell out a subscription fee for satellite radio. Think of the 9.95 fee for Napster as "satellite" radio, where you get to pick all the songs in the playlist on demand.
.wma's on the iPod). The ability to just listen to songs on a whim whenever I felt like it is something that I definitely miss with iTunes. In fact, Napster is pretty much a superset of the iTMS. You can still do non-subscription $0.99 downloads if youwant.
In those terms it doesn't seem quite as unreasonable.
I used to be a Napster subscriber, but since I bought an iPod I cancelled (can't use the
what if real life were like the internet (encoded in real video my apologies)
After the initial commercial, the relevant part is the very beginning of the skit (feel free to stick with it if it entertains ya... or not... wtf do I care?!)
*shrug*
rampy
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Minor correction to your interpretation of Apple's DRM implementation. There is no notion of "only moving them 3 times".
The files can be 'authorized' via servers at Apple to play on three machines simultaneously. This authorization is a one-time transaction that does require a network connection when the song is first played.
After that, and from any of these three machines, the song can be burned to CD any number of times, as well as copied to any number of ipods for mobile playback.
The only way that a DRM'd AAC file could 'die' as you say, is if Apple went out of business, noone acquired their authorization scheme and music store, and you wanted/had to move the song file for some reason.
Arguments about Apple going out of business are for another thread, however in a world where DRM is a fact of life, Apple's is the most consumer-freindly that I've yet seen.
"That naive cube! How long must I suffer this!" --Sheldon J. Plankton
Is anyone else around here sick and tired of the movement away from ownership to where everything is leased, for a monthly fee..
If you dont own it, boycott it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
These people seem to have the most difficult time usderstanding that the music business is over.
There has been a order of magnitude change in the price that people are willing to pay for pre-recorded music. This change happened in 1997-2000 when the combination of MP3, CD rippers, Napster, and $100 CD burners came into public consciousness at the same time.
In other words, people aren't going to pay $18 for a CD or $1 for a song. They will pay $1.80 for a CD and 18 cents for a song.
This is the new public perception of what music is worth.
The transformation in music distribution due to a technology shift doesn't seem to have penetrated the thick skulls of the people who run the music industry.
It happened. It's a new reality. It's like the stock market crash. Yahoo! is never going to be $180 a share again. CDs are not going to bought in huge numbers at $18 each anymore.
Learn to deal with it. And stop all these insane lawsuits before somebody gets hurt. They all have six figure incomes - they're supposed to be smart. Sheezh!
"So if you pay more than $10/month on cd's and expect to continue to do so for the rest of your life and you don't think napster is going to collapse I'd say it's a deal. However, if you are like me and probably paid a few hundred dollars on a bunch of cd's over the years but only force buying a new cd every year or so then it's really not worth it. On demand works for some things, not for others. I definately don't think it works for music."
There are a lot of people who spend more than $10 a month on cds. They get a much better deal with napster, espeially since in a couple of years, a lot of the cds they bought they will no longer listen to. To dismiss this market because you don't buy many cds is ridiculous.
The term is "the old stamping ground". Like "champing at the bit". Kind of odd, but that is really how the phrase goes. I hate it when people misuse phrases from Elvis Costello songs:)
--If I said something interesting it probably wasn't correct
A FLAC rip of a CD burnt from an AAC file sounds exactly like the AAC file. I see no problem here.
It's still an unlicensed derivative work. You might as well have downloaded the song from Soulseek - both that action and your suggested action are equivalent. Except that Apple has your dollar and you're not going to get that back, either through refund or resale.
Your current ability to create derivative copies of the iTMS product and record them onto other media does not give you the right to listen to those derivative works when and if your right to the original source material has passed. Consider also that a future revision by Apple of the licensing terms may invoke technological barriers to your ability to create derivative copies of the iTMS product. Or try this: currently there is a small but definite quality loss through the transcoding process. Apple may decide in future to increase the quality loss for the AAC->CDDA process. Where are your "rights" to listen to your music on a wide range of players then?
Da Blog
The only way that a DRM'd AAC file could 'die' as you say, is if Apple went out of business, noone acquired their authorization scheme and music store, and you wanted/had to move the song file for some reason.
Or Apple's business plan changes. Remember the way they left the Mac cloners hung out to dry?
---
but it seems fairly obvious to me that any consumer could record their Napster-streamed songs with a decent sound card and a program like Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/). That might stop some people from using Apple's service, which would certainly cost more per song. Of course, the sound quality might not be as great as buying actual CDs, but I assume from the other posts that it wouldn't be any worse than the quality offered by Apple's service. Therefore, it would really be a better buy with Napster. You could, in fact, "own" all your music--at least in the sense that you could take it anywhere.
Every windows user is a sadomasochist.
I can keep listening to my music just as legally, and continue to burn said files onto CD's as much as I want.
.Mac. Things change.
The CDs you burn are derivative works, and you have no legal right to listen to them as seperate entities non-counterminious with your license to listen to the AAC-FairPlay file.
You say you have not bought any Apple product, but you are using iTunes. Currently freeware, yes. Let's try a thought experiment - in 10 years Apple has a 90% monopoly in licensed downloaded music. It announces it's going to charge for the next upgrade to iTunes. $10 annually, say. What to do? You've spent several thousand dollars on iTMS downloads...
Now, you can say, what the hell? I won't pay and your right to listen to your AAC-FairPlay files expires. I will listen to my CDs. But those CDs are now unlicensed. You can listen to them, but you would be equally legally justified listening to CDs of tunes you downloaded from Soulseek. I know you say "what is the difference"? I say, "not much", except in copyright terms. You are breaching copyright in both cases, except in the former, Apple has your money and you are not getting it back.
You say Apple will never charge for iTunes. That may be true. Then again, iLife was "free" once upon a time. And
Da Blog
Yeah because all the clone boxes suddenly stopped working after Apple stopped licensing them. Oh, wait ...
Just because Apple lets you do that conversion with minimal lossage now does not necessarily mean that it will remain high-quality.
You shall be entitled to burn and export Products solely for personal, non-commercial use.
You neglected to bold this bit: The key is "accommodation". The iTMS Product remains the licensed, singular entity - the "burn" is a derivative work. As Apple repeatedly states, it is for "backup" purposes. Apple is not granting you any specific mechanical reproduction rights.
You also left out the usual get-out-jail-free clause: It says nothing about losing the right to the music if their service disappears.
Apple doesn't have to say this explicitly. Instead, it states that your use of the Product must remain in accordance with the State of California, which has civil regulations against the production or use of unlicensed derivative works:
Your use of a DVD analogy is flawed. A DVD is a physical product that you have purchased. Because it is owned, you have resale and modification rights concerning that physical medium on which a licensed reproduction of a copyrighted work has been engraved. You enjoy no such rights of ownership over an iTMS Product.
I have to hand it to Apple - they are quite clever. A few years ago I honestly would never have thought I'd find so many people on
Da Blog
I also don't see how my CDs would somehow become unlicensed because I'm not using iTunes any more.
If you lose possession of or access to the iTMS Product, then the license status of your CD backups becomes questionable. I would compare them to VHS tapes of cable broadcasts, except that it took lots of lawsuits to establish the legality of such VHS "backups" and as yet nobody has established the limits of iTMS "backups". Only the Product is the licensed entity. More info here.
Da Blog
Putting the money into diversified investments and renting your home often gives you more money in the bank at the end. The conclusion, don't buy a house for economic reasons, buy one for personal reasons.
Backups. They call them backups. Backup Backup Backup. That CD you burn is a backup. A backup of what? Of the real iTMS "Product". The distinction between backup and Product is enunciated.
Da Blog
5 alternatives to paying $120/year for internet radio (i.e. Napster, Rhapsody, etc)
.99/song either, so they too can eat the corn out of my excrement)
1. CDs: about 11-13 bucks (Best Buy, CC, etc)
2. Used CDs: 6-7 bucks in many places
3. P2P networks (nuff said)
4. Radio
5. loaning & trading with friends and family
(in other words, what 99.9% of most people are doing already with music and other media)
If it was 9.95/month for unlimited downloads - or hell, even 100 downloads, we might bite, but $120/year for streams? c'mon dudes. Even I-tunes gives you the freakin' file (but I don't support
this kind of money could be better spent at food banks, shelters, schools, jerry's kids, special olympics, etc. (or you can send me the money as I'm saving up for the Rosie O'Donnel Show Season 1 DVD box set)
what makes you think that Apple is artificially degrading sound quality when you convert from AAC to AIFF
/. is surprising. But then Apple has always been good at co-opting enthusiasm.
Read carefully, I did not state that this is currently the case, but I did state that it could become the case at some point in the future. That's really up to Apple. If I was an Evil Genius with a Monpoloy Share, then at some point in the future I might allow lo-fi backups, but build in a charge for hi-fi backups. Or disallow completely, at the behest of my licensing masters.
And on the subject of burning CDDA - the error correction on CDDA discs is far from satisfactory. In fact, burning a CDDA disc has more in common with a very fine analog copying process, especially with marginal blanks or high-speeds. BLERs baby, BLERs.
The same rights you have of the AAC file you have of the CD
That is where you are wrong. The license attaches to the Product, the backup enjoys no grandfathered rights.
Again I say that personally, finding such willing advocates of DRM on
Da Blog
You need to go re-learn about Fair Use rights.
Thanks for that tip, really. There is one thing you need to realize about the fair use doctrine as practiced in the US:
It is not a right, but in fact a defence. You do not enjoy a right to make copies, but if sued you can try to pleade "fair use" as an affirmative defence. It's up to you to prove that you were not infringing. This should be compared with the British-derived "fair dealing" enumerated rights of specific quantities of mechanical reproduction. US laws are far less strongly in favour of the defendant than most other countries.
Finally, I'd love to see the doctrine of "first sale" extended to iTMS Product and similar licensed electronic music files, but I think it will take a case similar to Softman v Adobe in scope to establish this, and I wouldn't want to be in the hotseat for this one.
Da Blog
The primary justification for buying my Karma 20 MP3/OGG player was books-on-CD from the library. I missed reading, and now I can "read" a book while driving on the boring interstate or doing menial labor (not programming or engineering). In fact, I'm ripping and encoding the last CD from Jon Krakaur's Under The Banner Of Heaven as I type this. Listen once, and I'm done, which does make sense for a monthly rental. I'd gladly skip the trip to the library and rent a single use MP3 for a buck or two. Saving me the time to shuffle CDs would be worth it.
Of course, all the DRM and DMCA crap is far too much hassle to be worth using. The artists need to be compensated, but making it almost impossible to enjoy their work is not the solution.
I like the idea of putting the control back in the hands of the artists, regardless of whether it's a book-on-CD or music. Pay to download works. I have used PayPal to quickly send a few bucks to various humor websites if I liked the content. Ubergeek is a great example. I also donated $20 to a Multiple Sclerosis charity website in the UK because I liked the novel breast bearing approach that was used to solicit donations.
A few dollars for a download, paid directly to the artist is a lot better than the raping they get from the RIAA.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
Fair use is law
I'm reading what you posted and, unless you're a member of one of the classes here enumerated, then your defence is not explicit. Once again, it's an affirmative defence, not a right.
As for the "doctrine of first sale," I'm as interested as you are but that's not the topic of this discussion
Maybe you've forgot how this started, but I haven't. I stated that people who "bought" iTMS Product did not really "own" the Product, insofar as we usually establish ownership. One of those attributes being the doctrine of first sale. It was painful to establish this for OEM software, and you will probably still get your ass sued if you go around selling after-market OEM software. For iTMS Product, no such process has yet extended any meaningful ownership rights to this.
I don't like DRM, but it's a necessary evil. And Apple's DRM Fairplay has the best balance of consumer rights so far.
This is like being faced with a choice of death by the chair, or by guillotine. "Well at least the guillotine is painless!". Or being faced with two muggers - one will pummel you with a stick about the face until you die, while the other wants to kick you death while wearing soft slippers. Your choice.
Steve would be proud of you.
Da Blog
I'd say it's more like giving up a few rights (if any) for sheer convenience. But different strokes for different folks....
as many songs as they want each month for $9.95.
Check out online radio from MusicMatch. It cost less, and it works nicely.
I am a happy subscriber.
-1 Non Sequitr
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
I don't really care about the DRM argument and such. Only thing that makes me wonder is why do none of the online music services compete on prices. And why should I pay same price for something I D/L as I would for a physical CD.. And it gets better yet. The reason there are no online music services in europe is that the record labels insist that the cost-per-song must match local CD prices. So we'd be looking at .99 pounds or 1.4 euros/song! *gah*
Yes, I know the reason is that the labels are running a cartel.
So, there's a vast misunderstanding throughout this thread. The dichotomy between napster and itunes is false. Napster has downloads just like iTunes, so you can buy tracks and use them under exactly the same rules as iTunes. However, IN ADDITION TO DOWNLOADS napster offers a subscription service that lets you download and stream all you can onto your computer. This is imo a great feature for exploring and discovering music prior to purchasing the right to burn or xfer to devices, but YMMV. So the idea that iTunes does somethign Napster doesn't is simply wrong.