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Napster Launches UK Music Service
amichalo writes "Napster just went multi-continent with the surprise announcement of a Napster UK on-line music service. From the website, singles at 1.09 British pounds, albums start at 9.95 pounds. Availability for other European nations not available. Apple has previously announced they would be entering the European market by the end of the year with rumors of singles priced at 1.49 Euro."
Only secure WMA downloads available. Not the greatest idea IMHO bearing in mind the popularity of the iPod.
both prices seem inacceptable - given the current exchange rate, a song should not be more than about 0.85 euros, or 1 euro max (to round it up).
The price difference is very evident in times when the American prices at iTMS are just one click away. Ripping off customers is the wrong signal for both stores, and for the music industry. Will they ever learn?
We shall fght DRM on the beaches.
We shall fight on the landing grounds.
We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.
Napster beats iTunes to Europe with U.K. launch
Hmmm.
How do they keep their prices so low and still make a profit?
That's really not that much cheaper than a "real" single... and you only have to look at a site like to see that pricing for "real" albums is already less than 9.99!
You're having a giraffe ain'tcha?
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
one thing i'm disappointed about those offerings is the fact that the formats they use can't store the text for the songs, so that hearing impaired people could follow a song while it's being played (alongside the vibration, the bass).
That is way too much money. I would much rather pay a monthly fee for unlimited usage or just listen to live365 for free!
stuff |
I went along to the .com site last night, and was promptly redirected to the .co.uk as it has detected I was from the UK. Fair enough I guess.
The free 11meg download intrigued me, so went to look. Didn't get far mind.
At the bottom of the front page it does say:
System Requirements
PC only, Windows XP/2000, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.1 or higher, Windows Media Player 7.1 or higher, Internet connectivity
The page I was sent to, as a Konq user, was even worse:
Napster is currently compatible with Windows XP/2000.
Windows 95, Windows NT and the Mac OS are not supported at this time.
They wouldn't have had my custom anyway, but even if they would have had, after that, no chance.
Get with it Napster
Thats almost as much as buying the CD (even in the UK).
Its more than the cost of the CD in many countries, like the US.
saying that Napster UK is Napster breaking into the European market is like saying that the USA and Europe went to war together in Iraq...
we've been waiting for iTunes here in Ireland for the last 6 months or so and we're not holding our breath...
I can get it on a CD with no DRM for that. Hell, if I take advantage of the current exchange rate I can probably get it for half
about how the major European labels are really putting the squeeze on Apple because they a) fear that they are going to become the dominant online music vendor b) don't want to create another MTV like entity, where the labels provide the content but don't have explicit control over it once it is turned over c) are greedy and stupid and d) don't seem to mind that the online market in Europe is already crowded.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
"1.09 British pounds" Lemme guess -
0.20 Tax
0.01 Payment to the artist
0.78 Music industry profits
and now with added -
0.10 DRM administration
And you don't even have a physical object, so if your HDD fries you have to buy it all over again...
My housemate downloads large amounts of music - as he puts it - "I paid for it once on vinyl, once on tape, once on CD. After my CD's were stolen did they really think I was gonna buy them all over again?"
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
The Apple iTunes price of 1.49 for a single is ludicrous. Especially considering that the Euro is at $1.19 now.
Haven't they considered that average European salary is less than in the US ?
Bah
Tristan
--
The world is divided in two categories:
those with a loaded gun and those who dig. You dig.
This article is just full of errors. I have lots of albums, and NONE of them weigh more than a pound.
Best Windows Freeware
Branding is one of the greatest scams ever perpetrated on people, but as long as they fall for it, it'll keep going. It might be a good service, or it might not, I haven't tried it to know, but I'd like to think that I'm smart enough to know that using the Napster trademark does not make you the successor of the Napster of old. If I ever use this service, it's because it's good and has a good selection and reasonable prices, not because of the Napster name.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
Really, ignoring the fact that it only has DRM, and only has WMA files...
The thing about Napster was it had a lot of music. Anything anyone felt like sharing. This new service doesn't. It just has what the corporate puppets decide that we should want. It's not the same service. I wish they'd stop pretending.
Hmm... can they get into trouble with theEU for being UK only?
"Yes, we have multiple resuilts for 'zerfnarkle'"
Oddly enough "Beatles" didn't return "The Beatles" amongst the list of matches.
I'd prefer to convert music into my desired format, so I will continue to purchase physical media.
GBP1.09 is expensive compared with US prices - iTunes at 99c (about GBP0.55, or half this price). This is yet another example of where us British have to pay substantially more for the same product than our American (and often European) counterparts. PCs and components have often been the same number of pounds here as dollars there. It's just not fair.
Come on, we're fed up of being ripped off by international big businesses. DVDs are another example - and of course region encoding is designed to stop us from importing more cheaply from the US.
All you British reading this, I urge you to boycott products at these prices - and write to the company concerned explaining your actions and why.
At least car prices have started to become a bit more reasonable recently, but only compared to the rest of Europe. I believe they are still a lot cheaper in the US.
DFJA
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.
When I saw a spray-painted logo of Napster.co.uk on the sidewalk outside my office this morning.
Is it just me, or is this an especially despicable form of advertising? Marketers must love it... not having to pay for ad space, while at the same time making it more noticeable because the one place we can expect not to see ads is under our feet...lovely.
If people go and see that Napster UK and Napster Europe are offering terrible prices, what incentive are they going to have to buy online? It will encourage either (a) people buying more real albums or (b) people downloading more music illegally. (A) will be a boon for the recording industry, (B) will be a bane for it, both of them will suck for Napster.
"albums start at 9.95 pounds" That is a lot of albums. Wait, is Britan on the metric system?
Apparently he's popular in Germany. The song "Hot Shot City" is particularly good
This was reported in the main daily nationals here (in the UK) yesterday... and yes it is too bloody expensive :)
the future's bright, the future's ginger
That explains all the chalk grafitti that popped up everywhere in Edinburgh today.
Pic here:here
it's 10 a month to stream all the music you can eat.
I don't tend to listen to music on the move and my computer is plugged into my TV's speaker system, so that means I can have every album they sell for 10 a month, which actually sounds worthwhile to me.
They are lacking some obvious bands though. Why no U2?
My Journal
Dont think ill be using it any time soon :(
When will these companies realise that the only reason Napster et al. were popular was because of the ease of access to a free catalogue of music ?
Who cares about a digital delivery system if you can buy a CD (and something tangible) for less ?
The majority of people will not care that it is 'easier', 'faster' [insert marketing crap here] etc... they'd rather buy cheap and spend the money saved on a few more beers after work - I know I would.
As one option is to pay Napster GBP9.99 for a month's worth of unlimited streams, what's to stop me from ripping them with a system sound recorder and making my own MP3s, Oggs etc.?
I reckon of Napster's library of 500,000 tracks, I could probably find everything I like (and don't already have) and record it in this way in a month. That's gotta be worth a tenner of anyone's money ;)
albums start at 9.95 pounds
What the... this is practically the price of just going to your local supermarket and buying the CD itself, seriously, about 10 at Tesco or the like, especially after a month or two anyway.
What a rip off.
Do they honestly think they can convert people away from Kazaa at these prices? 1.09 a song seems very reasonable, but the album price is sky-high, they won't win many battles with file sharing at this rate.
but don't worry.. they're going to learn this the hard way, and until an album is 6.00 or 7.00 i doubt the majority will bite.
they should also do deals of buying higher than 3 albums at once, im sure a lot of people are looking to buy entire album collections for their mp3 players etc.
They need to learn that we want to but non DRM protected files. If we can't buy them we will get them for free.
:-(
Back to kazaa etc....
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
They might do OK on the singles. They may be a rip-off relative to the US prices, but they're still a hell of a lot cheaper than buying singles in the shops. Last time I looked it was 3.99+ for a CD single containing 1 track and a couple of shitty remixed.
With Play.com selling albums for 9.99, 8.99 and even 5.99, however, I can't see many people paying up for Napster.
WHY do companies continue to put up these artificial barriers? Why not simply call it a US company and have Napster US sell worldwide? Are the laws that screwed up? Isn't that the point of the internet?
What, exactly, are you driving at?
Branding is not a scam. It protects you from inferior products and snake-oil salesman. Before branding came along, people would come to town with artifical remedies, bad products, etc., take your money and move on. Now, if you are not fair with consumers it hurts the brand. Branding, in fact, keeps companies honest.
If the catalogue's so great, how come they don't allow one a proper search before registering?
I've got five free songs for Napter which I'll use but I think someone should tell them that by buying online or from independant shops I can get most physical CDs uncompressed and without DRM for 7.99 or 8.99. How exactly do they expect to get people to buy stuff?
Hmmm, sounds a bit ticked off eh?
I'd be more than happy to pay artists a fair price (1.00 or so seems fair to me, CD singles are hugely overpriced) for their music in a convenient portable format (e.g. MP3- if I want higher quality I'll buy a CD). I don't want to upset artists. I won't redistribute files if the artist doesn't want me to. I don't particularly care what the record labels want, they don't make the music and as far as I know they don't have a god-given right to make money from someone else's creativity.
Napster's pricing seems fair but they're treating everyone as a potential criminal, guilty until proven innocent, by insisting on Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player. So they're imposing their rules rather than trusting their customers to follow them. I would feel insulted if they would even let me be a customer! I can't afford Windows. It's very overpriced software for what it does (badly), even without the cost of hardware which can run it and the cost of cleaning up after the constant virus attacks.
Where Napster is concerned I feel like I have 3 options;
So, I want a non-Windows (Java?) Napster (or a Napster client) which will let me *buy* and listen to music without assuming that I'm trying to rip off the artist. How about it, hackers? The world wants some code which masquerades as IE and WMP so that Napster subscribers can legally download the music they want to listen to. This shouldn't even try to circumvent the subscription.
I suppose I could just listen to music on the radio, then no one gets any revenue from me... Or try to save up for an iBook and use iTunes (still DRM etc., but avoids Microsoft)...
How is this going to compete againt www.allofmp3.com, offering DRM-free albums for about $0.60?
That's not that a little cheaper, that's not even half the price, that is cheaper by a factor 30!!
...and in London. IBM got fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for their Peace, Love, Linux vandalism in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and New York in 2001. Now Napster tries to be cool by turning public property into private marketing space. Sorry Shawn. It's way cooler trading music for free than buying your DRM-crippled, vandal-marketed, over-priced tracks.
Another point in regards to compensation is that healthcare (which has its ups and downs) is "free" to all residents. When simply comparing prices or visting the UK, it does feel like a rip off but in perspective its not as bad as its made out to be stateside. Beyond that, I agree that there will be some turbululence with the rest of the continent if the Euroskeptics do not get their way and the Euro is implemented in GB and one could only begin to imagine the potential economic impact.
Fun Fact: A mile of travel on the tube (London Underground Subway System) is more expensive than a mile of travel on the concorde [tfl.gov.uk]and is the most expensive subway system in the world.
...that's what I did. We *are* in a free market here (called the EU/EEA) with complete freedom to import things from anywhere within any of those 28 countries at least (25 EU + 3 EEA).
Prices here in Ireland are even more extortionate than the UK, so I buy just about anything of any value from other EU/EEA countries (Germany, France, Norway, Spain). It's especially easy to compare prices now that much of the EU has the same currency.
I used to buy stuff from the UK also, but sterling is very expensive at the moment, and UK businesses seem much more insular and unwilling to sell to other European countries than continental companies (the Germans are particularly notable from a price and willing to deliver point of view). Of course the currency thing works well for you if you are earning sterling and purchasing from a Eurozone country.
I agree that the prices in the US are cheaper, but often this is not the case when you add on the tax and shipping (which can be extortionate). It's also somewhat artifically cheap right now due to the weakness of the dollar.
Try www.kelkoo.de to search the German prices (generally German shops are cheapest, I have also bought cameras from www.pixmania.com who do next day delivery anywhere in the EU for very little).
I got my EOS 300D from www.worldtronix.com where it is now available for €969. Shipping was €24 to Ireland. (Just make sure you order the one with the lens included.)
They probably won't get in trouble because the UK is only a "quasi-EU" member.
[emote:Silly American ducks flying utensils from English counterparts]
And LimeWire/Kazaa mp3s are free...
afterall, i haven't heard of anyone in UK getting arrested for having mp3 libraries...
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
This announcement baffles me. 9.95 for an electronic version of an album. Something I can't put in my Hifi. Something that can't playback in a car. Something that is compressed and hence will be lower quality than a CD of the same album.
On the flipside, I can walk into a supermarket and buy many CDs for less than 8, and many others for less than 5. All of these will play in the hifi. They'll plaback in a car. I can lend them to my friends. I can back them up in case my kid grabs the CD and scratches it to destruction. The quality will be pristine quality, rather than having compressed audio artifacts, and should I wish to carry an electronic copy for my own use, I can do that trivially.
If I want a CD I don't already have and don't want to leave the house, I can go to somewhere like play.com, and have the CD delivered, again generally speaking for significantly less, and significantly greater (LEGAL - like listening to it somewhere I choose on a device I choose - like the hifi) use and less restrictions on how I want to listen to music.
Quite why anyone would want to pay more for less is beyond me.
Of course, the CD version is also uncompressed
Uncompressed? Hardly. There's a documented illusion that a slightly louder sound will sound "better" to the human auditory system. The labels want their CDs to sound louder, so they use a limiter to compress the shit out of the dynamics. It gets so bad that the drum hits are clipped beyond recognition.
Learn more about dynamic hypercompression and the loudness race
10 quid and 1 quid?? fuck that, thats almost the same price as a CD, but with lossy compression and nothing physical, if you want me to pay for my music then don't make me sniff this shit.
Are the laws that screwed up?
Yes, which leads to the same excuses that MPAA members give for insisting on DVD region coding. Many countries ban parallel imports of products encumbered by a subsisting copyright or patent. Many copyright owners worked out life-of-the-copyright territory-exclusive licensing deals decades ago, where a foreign company acts as a particular label's distributor in a specific territory. And some works are in the public domain in one country but are still under copyright in another.
Napster's pricing seems fair but they're treating everyone as a potential criminal, guilty until proven innocent
Only at the insistence of the major record labels. If you want something like Magnatune, you know where to find it.
why do american companies keep helping out the UK? Gezz, cant they do anything their selfs?
keanmarine.com
From the site: "PC only, Windows XP/2000, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.1 or higher, Windows Media Player 7.1 or higher, Internet connectivity"
So I guess as a Mac user who wouldn't touch IE with a bargepole I'll stick with www.allofmp3.com where I can download music, in ANY format and bit rate of my choosing for a 1cent a megabyte (that's about 60cents an album!). And no DRM.
So fuck you Napster.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
about 2 months ago a Europe-wide consumer organisation found the same, for camera's you shop in Austria. (No, not the Skippy place you moron)
It is indeed frustrating to see how prices are manipulated in Europe, it is clearly not (just) tax that makes the difference.
But then in Europe just about every stand-alone DVD player is Region Free (tm) or can be made to be.
And that's the way we like it!
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Walking out of Birmingham, New Street station today I noticed a Napster logo and their tag line sprayed on a pillar. I assumed it was deliberate vandalism and paid for by them.
This story confirms that. Let's hope they fined and charged to clean up the mess they've made: I doubt the one I saw was the only one.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
My first thoughts about the service are:
-For 9.95 a month it gives me all the music I can listen to on my PC without having to pay for each individual song/album separately
-If I want a specific album, or compliation, to listen to away from my PC then I can purchase this as a one-off which I then own a license for
Let's have a look at the distinction between these two pricing models:
Allowing me unlimited access to music from my PC, and via my home network using Shoutcast (the files play in Winamp also) seems a very good deal. In the past I would've had to buy every song/album I wanted to listen to, or be content with listening to a radio/music television. Now, I have access to a lot of content to listen to in the home.
Now - say I want to listen to music on my MiniDisc player while travelling to work by train, or if I wanted to burn a CD to listen to in the car - I can also do this, but the condition is that I must pay individually for these tracks, but in paying for the tracks/album, then I can use these files to play my music anywhere.
Personally, I think the software is brilliant and Napster have created a great service here. I plan to keep on my subscription when it becomes necessary to pay.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
"Apple has previously announced they would be entering the European market by the end of the year with rumors of singles priced at 1.49 Euro."
I thought they had to watch that because of the record company, apple.
I just saw a huge napster.co.uk logo being projected in Chinatown in London tonight. So I guess that's what that was all about.
So... what was the "surprise" supposed to be? Who was surprised? By what? Isn't this exactly what they said they wanted to do??
The only thing valuable is the name, the
value in teh service is nothing.. I guess they are hoping to appeal to the late comers who know they need mp3s and were told all this time mp3s are cool.. To be cool you must have mp3s.. And napster was cool, now its not, but there are still people who are addicted to the fantasy of being cool on computers.
Cool is that which does something fantastic without nobody really knowing you know.. But its cool to share it.. But once its been completely exploited it becomes uncool.. But isn't it strange how the sales/marketing people latch onto it and say "Hey we can sell so much stuff with the name this brand has earned, imagine how many people would pay just to rub against our coolness!!"
Just say no to license servers!!