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.'"

Comments

Beam Back

[selphish189]

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.

Napster is dead

[paradesign]

Thats all there is to it. It had its time, it made its splash, its part of our collective history now.

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.

Re:I will not buy DRM

[wongaboo]

I don't know about Napster but I find it easy to recode my AAC's from Apple's itunes music store as MP3's. Bye bye DRM.

Prepaid Napster Cards

[relaying denied]

I saw prepaid Napster cards in the local conevience store the other day. Scary...

Way to rip of PA

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to steal someone else's joke, you could at least give credit. A Penny Saved

Re:Sorry...

[GreenCrackBaby]

I'd rather pay $9.95 a month and have access to the label's entire catalog

Not agreeing or disagreeing with you here, just pointing out that with Napster, if you pay the $9.95 per month you actually aren't given access to the entire catalogue. Many songs appear to be marked as "purchase only".

Food for thought...

Re:Is Napster Secure?

[jeffgeno]

Yes, just use Total Recorder.

http://www.highcriteria.com/

I... um... Some guy I know uses it to record directly to MP3 files from Rhapsody. The sound quality is almost indistinguishable from the original when recording at 320kbps, but still noticably a bit lower than a CD rip.

Re:Why Should I bother?

[fupeg]

You're absolutely correct that the biggest reason people choose to buy their music instead of getting via p2p is for moral/legal reasons, not because of its "consumer" benefit. There are some convenience reasons too, at least for iTunes.

• It is far easier to search for something on iTunes, especially non-Top 40 music.
• The downloads are almost always faster, sometimes dramatically so, especially for non-Top 40 stuff where you are probably only downloading from one person.
• It is more secure. You are not opening up your computer to some virus/worm that is p2p aware.
• Quality controls. Ok so maybe you're not satisfied with 128 kbs AAC. I won't get into the debate about the quality of such files. However, at least you're not going to get a messed up rip, or a partial song, or a song that claims to be 320 kbps stereo but turns out to be 64 kpbs mono. You're not going to get Madonna cursing you out either.
• Combining the two points above, you don't have to worry about downloading something with a virus.
• Download albums. If you want to download all of The Shins album, you don't have to go and search for them song by song. Buying a whole album is trivial on iTunes, just as easy as downloading a single song.

Re:Easy access

[Anonymous Coward]

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. iTMS has gift certificates too.

Re:I will not buy DRM

[cain]

www.magnatune.com - "We are not evil."

Subscription vs. Buying Online

[Long-EZ]

I am completely uninterested in renting music by the month, for all the obvious reasons. However...

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.