Slashdot Mirror
Napster To Campaign Aggressively Against iPod
rocketjam writes "Forbes reports that Napster plans an aggressive marketing campaign against Apple's iPod as part of its subscription service full launch later this quarter. Napster's service uses Microsoft's Janus technology to enable DRM protected music files 'bought' through subscription services to be transferred from a PC to a portable music player. Napster CEO Chris Gorog said the company is betting heavily that their monthly 'all you can eat' subscription service will win the battle for online digital music services, claiming, 'It's exactly what consumers want to do. Napster To Go is very similar to the P2P experience.' He believes the best way to market the service is to emphasize its advantages over iTunes and its iPod-only compatibility. 'We're going to be communicating to people that it's stupid to buy an iPod.' Maybe I'm too old to get it, but I fail to see the attraction of paying a monthly fee for as long as I want to have access to my music." Of course, if Napster To Go supported iPod, they'd have a much larger install base to convince to use their service, instead of still pleading people to buy a portable player with compatible DRM installed.
Actually, when you use the Napster service you also have the option to purchase "most" tracks (don't know what that really means) for an additional $0.99 per track. So it really depends on whether you find that $15 a month for essentially an unlimited free trial (until you quit the service) of all the music a value added.
But as another poster pointed out, the music you "purchase" in iTMS or Napster is still not really yours, because you're still restricted by their DRM from doing a lot of things (protected by fair use) with the music you payed for. You're still tied to certian supported platforms and players, restricted in what computers you can move it to, and forbidden from reselling. Personally, I chose Emusic, because I actually own the music I pay for (well, in the sense you own the music on a CD anyway) and can do what I want with it (within the confines of law). There are other services like this out there too. Of course, many major labels/bands won't allow anyone to actually sell their music in a digital format not encumbered by DRM.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
... Go to www.allofmp3.com. The following might sound too good to be true, but just go check it t out. It's an online music store (run by a Russian company) where you:
... all up to CD quality.
... *looks it up*... 2241 songs weighing in at 11.33 Gb.
1) Have the choice between Mp3, WMA, Ogg, Mpc, FLAC, Monkey Audio, Mpeg - 4 AAC (iTunes compatible)
2) Pay by the MB.
3) Have a library almost as large as any of the US services in the market (and much better as far as back catalogue is concerned).
4) CAN BUY MUSIC LEGALLY, at least in my country. I checked and had checked by representatives of the Austrian music industry, they grudgingly conceded that yes, it is legal for me to buy music there for a tenth of what it costs me at home.
I have spent over 140 dollars there in the last six months. But those 140 bucks bought me over
Heck, you can even pay using PayPal. There is NO reason not to use this service. Economically, music is a luxury. Lower the price for luxuries, and sales go orbital.
Just a quick nitpick...
People seem to forget that, even when "purchasing" music, even at $0.99/song, you don't really "own" the music, just the right to play it on a portable device, burn it onto a CD or two, and play it on a few machines that you own... and a significantly "upgraded" machine is considered a new machine. Upgrade enough times and, with most of the DRM software out there, you can't have your music any more.
Actually, that's not exactly true. There is an option in iTunes that will allow you to deauthorize your computer, so that if a machine is going to be reloaded, serviced, what-have-you, it's not going to take up one of your five allotments anymore. If you forget to deauthorize a machine and have already wiped it, they even provide a web-based form which allows you to deauthorize it without being on the machine.
There's an Apple knowledge base article which explains it more here.
Just my $.02...
You dont need a CD to convert AAC to MP3. You just need to convert it to AIFF on your harddisk first. then you can transcode it. Yes. that is two steps but you can write an apple script to do it auomatically. the AIFF step does not lose quality so the transcoding is effectively a single step. To prove this to yourself just do the following. open iMovie (not iTunes). pick any protected AAC song from the library and addit is a sound track. now look in the iMovie folder that contains your new movie. Voila there is the AIFF file. Now drag this into iTunes and transcode it to MP3. Now automate this with Applescript. Install the script into the iTunes services and viola you have a new menu item in Itunes to convert any protected AAC to mp3 with no more loss of quality than any other trascode. alternatively you can just use DVD John's hack to break the AAC protection, though that might have some watermarking issues that someday could crop up in the future if apple wanted to get ughly about it
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.