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The Nine Lives of Napster

Posted by michael on from the plz-die-thx dept.

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.'"

4 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. Beam Back by selphish189 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Way to rip of PA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

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

  3. Re:Sorry... by GreenCrackBaby · · Score: 5, Informative
    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...

    --

    "The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
  4. Re:Why Should I bother? by fupeg · · Score: 4, Informative
    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.