Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!!!!
Unsubscribe, you lose all 'rights' to play?
Dont do DRM.
Good tip. And if that doesnt work, well...it wouldnt give good quality...but the way I see it...(and many already mentionned), just take an analog wire going from where you plug your speaker to, let say, the line 2 input of a front panel of an audigy platinum (or superior equivalent) and record from that source... Anything software-based would be screwed right there o.O Unless of course it doesnt work on the computer at all... In any case, I thought why on-line music stores caught with the general population was because you could burn CDs of the songs... I dont like that, but so many do, or need to (older car cd player, etc), so well, if its streaming, people who cant get around it cant really enjoy it... Just my two cents.
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 ...
...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....
..but I am entirely uninterested in NOT owning my music.
I am. I'd rather pay $9.95 a month and have access to the label's entire catalog for streaming for as long as I want to pay $9.95 a month, than pay a dollar per song.
It breaks down to the price of about 10 "bought" songs per month, or 120 "bought" songs per year. Compared to my MP3 library of 3000+ songs, I'd have to subscribe for well over 20 years before it'd be cheaper for me to have just bought all that music outright.
NO CARRIER
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?
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
Well, I'm sorry, but you don't own your music unless you made it. What you do own is a copy of the music and a license to listen to it under certain conditions specified by the copyright owner. This includes all that vinyl (you do know what "vinyl" is, right?) and your CD collection as well.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I didn't read the article, nor do I have any plans on checking out the service. Having said that, this is a pretty lame analogy for most of us. I can't recall the last time I wanted to jam out with a good article on the Vietnam War while cruising up highway 280 to san francisco. But, when I feel like listening to Front 242 (hello 90's music) and putting the transmission in to Sport mode, thank god I have my iPod and a non-RF interface. And when was the last time you wanted to share a good piece of reference material at a party?
Let's face it, a lot of things *may* work on demand (movies seem to be what most people think of), but music is something that people like to share in a portable fashion: in the car, at a party, on the boat, wherever you spend your time.
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
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?