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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.
It states repeatedly that you can get MP3's to put on a Napster-supporting MP3 player.
From what I understand, their service and players are using WMA, with DRM of course.
MP3 != WMA. These are both very specific things. Had they just said "songs", or "music" it would not be an issue. They chose to say MP3 and I fail to see how thats not an outright lie. That oversight alone could be the nail in the coffin for them.
Phillips had similar issues with the RIAA labeling DRM-enabled CD's as official "Compact Discs." Phillips owns the rights to that name, and since the DRM broke the ability for those disks to play in many players, Phillips felt it was damaging their IP to claim they were CD's. They sued and won.
once you go slack, you never go back
Napster you have zero songs
You're 100% correct. I saw some of their new TV spots during the super bowl, and if you watch carefully, there is fine print at the bottom of the screen that says something like "Songs expire if you cancel your monthly membership"...
This will fail completely in the same way that Circuit City's Divx fiasco failed. People have proven time and time again that they don't want their media to expire. When they buy something, they want to OWN it, not just rent it until MegaMediaCorp decides they want it back.
Also, because there is no iPod support they are only able to sell to the less than 10% of the HD marketplace that isn't iPod and supports Microsoft DRM.
So, to break it down for you:
Lame product... check!
No target market... check!
Draconian DRM... check!
Their marketing department must all have MBAs from the Prestigious University of dot.Bomb, class of 2001...
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
I'm going to laugh my ass off when some 15 year old releases a hack that strips the DRM out of these Napster songs. Millions and millions of "rented" songs will become permanent non-DRM overnight.
Of course if you wanted to buy three albums a month, Napster seems to make sense. I wonder how many people want to buy that much music, since that's what Napster is really counting on.
Okay, the peer to peer network is not a fair comparison, because it's not money driven. But how many people download or downloaded more than, say, two albums a month via peer to peer? If you did, Napster might not be such a bad deal.
I consider Napster to be like cable TV, since you pay forever, and in return you get new programming every month. With Napster, you get new music continuously added every month that you can play at no extra cost.
It's not for me personally. I buy from 0-3 albums a month on iTunes, maybe averaging one album a month, which is a lot cheaper than Napster, and when things are tight and I don't feel like looking at music, I don't need to spend anything. For me, the iTunes store is by far the best model.
For new users, they can get hooked on the iTunes store one track at a time. The store is definitely well-designed and addictive, so it will suck you in, and then you're going to get the iPod and all will be well.
The big disadvantage of the cable TV model is that nobody wants a recurring charge on their credit card. That's a much harder sell to me than something I can spend money on it when I feel like it and ignore it when I don't.
The other disadvantage is actual patterns of listening to music. I find that when I discover new stuff, I listen to it a lot in the first month or two, and then it goes back in the rotation and I listen to old/new stuff. In short, music retains its value. It's unlikely you want to watch a TV series more than, say, ten or so times over its life. I have tracks in iTunes I've played hundreds of times. In short, it seems like many people like listening to music they've acquired before, and only slowly decide to add new tracks to their collection. This seems to make the iTunes music store model more natural.
Finally, Napster clearly has a tough row to hoe in encouraging people to give up their iPods. I have looked at competing music players and compared to the iPod they are just plain laughable.
So Napster does have financial advantages if you want to buy into the cable TV model of music. But as I've said, I don't think that's how most people want to buy music or think about it.
D
Maybe one of these services could consider a plan where if you rented a song for a set amount of time, it would become "yours", or at least unexpireable. That way I could experement with new artists, and get rid of them the next month, but my favorites would stay on my computer if I ever decide to stop subscribing. Another idea is to have the subscription rental service, then have discounts on "buying" the music you rent. For instance, $15 a month for unlimited rental of music, and $0.49 to buy any one of those songs.
Forget them going out of business.
How the hell can they activate/deactivate my music if I lose my internet connection?
liqbase
All they have to do is just make it so that if you stop paying the subscription you still keep the songs.
/. post but if you're correct. My fears of the iTMS-killer are over. You have to pay as long as you want your songs? Noone who realizes this will buy into it esp since I can't use my iPod. It just sounds stupid.. like paying for radio.
I definatly didn't get that from their ads. i wasn't sure from the
Anyway I'm betting people will try to sue them over the confusion. Doubt they'll win anything but I see many many complaints being lodged against them for that.--
The Wolfkin
Er, even if (and I say if) you are right that it's only 1 cent profit per song, Apple have sold 250 million songs to date, and are selling ongoing at a rate of 1.5 million a day, or ~ half a billion songs a year.
I think a 10-cent profit is more likely, making their yearly projection $50 million, which is hardly pocket change...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
That is more or less correct. Napster (in the UK at least) offer a £10 per month subscription which lets you get to the 'all you can eat', but only on an actual PC with Napster installed. You can then buy tracks for £0.99, and get rights to burn them to CD, transfer to portable players etc.
All Napster-To-Go does is let you use this subscription model to move music onto your portable player without paying extra for the right to do that.
It's good, and if iTunes ran a similar service (Listen Apple!) then they'd certainly get my subscription money. The only annoyance is that it's powered by MS DRM, which is vile, and it won't work without the Napster application running.
Aside from that it has some great features like Auto Radio, where I select some tracks from my library and it builds a radio station around my tastes (not chooses one from the stock list, dynamically builds one, which is great for finding new music).
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Yes, you pay a monthly fee, just like you pay a monthly fee to the internet.
Or TV.
Or Rent.
But, you know, when you stop paying those, the cable company, your landlord, and your ISP let you keep using the service.
Jason Lotito
Most of you guys are acting as if you "own" the files you download on Itunes. It too has DRM and has a limitation to the number of Transfers/Burns you can perform.
I am just curious as to why anyone cares so much that Napster has introduced a subscription service. Seems to me that more options = better. I bet all this angst is coming from the fact that it was Napster using WMA DRM 10 and not Apple with its AAC format that did this first.
If you want to "Own" your music then go out and buy your music from a CD store. If you want to fill your player with music, then choose a good online store. To me Napster right now has the better option on filling up my MP3 player.
it's amazing to me that while the dot-bomb killed off programmers and rank and file employees, while executives keep making more and more...for this?
good businesses are built by innovation, not by looking in the 'what's hot' section of the paper to come up with ideas...
a few years ago, while everybody and their brother was trying to figure out how to be the 'next Napster,' Apple was busy innovating, and that's why they are the lead dog in this race...
meanwhile, my wife and i, who are stupid enough to own 3 iPods, and 30,000 songs (some bought from iTunes) will never be stupid enough to subscribe to Napster!
good luck--see you on the way down, Gorog...
Who would 'burn the same playlist seven times' in the first place?
You make one CD, you duplicate said CD as many times as you like.
This might not be obvious to some iPod customers, granted.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
"just look at satellite radio!"
funny someone picks out satellite radio, yet the numbers of suscribers keeps growing. It just like when cable tv started. Who is going to pay for that etc. etc. etc. Yet I can listen to Uncensored material, get the same station wherever i travel too in the country, and dont have to deal with commericals.
Here is how you can look at it.
If you pay for the monthly fee, you get to listen to any song you like any time you like, what if you dont care about owning the song, I have a large collection, about 10000 songs. I would say about 9800 of them i havent listen to in the last 3 years. If you dont care about owning your songs, but like the idea you can go to the gym, library, etc.. and listen to whatever playlist you like at 15 bucks a month thats a good deal. You can get the latest albums or back catalogs you want to listen too and not have to pay more than 15 dollars for it. Yes it goes aways after you cancel, but at least at that time thats a conscience decision you can make. Some of you make an argument what if you miss a payment, etc. If you are concerned about a 15 dollar payment, then you shouldnt even be involved in this kind of service, or get a better job.
Interestingly, when this service comes out, someone will create a way to grab the songs "in transit" can save them. There will be lawsuits under the DMCA, and it could quite possibly lead to a challenging of the Betamax case, since the analogy is so close:
In Betamax, the court ruled that time-shifting of content supplied over a subscription service is fair use.
With Napster, the exact same model wold be in place. It will be very interesting to see how it goes.
WTF are you talking about? The grandparent post doesn't say anything about Ogg, Linux or DRM with regard to this service. To me it appears to say, plain and simple, having to pay in perpetuity for something that most people want to keep is asinine and will be a failure.
Middle school and High school kids are interested in the hits now.
I was in middle school and high school between 1985 and 1991. Guess what time period a great deal of the music on my iPod is from? Do you think any kid that age today will want to end up paying Napster $3600 ($15 * 12 months * 20 years) to have consistent access to the songs that bring back fond memories of his youth from now until 2025?
In short: Fuck, no!
Most people don't change-- they hold dear the music from when they were growing up. My parents' listened to oldies stations on the radio because they liked the music from the time when they grew up. They thought the music I listened to was shit. I still listen mostly to stuff from the 80s, when was growing up, and I think the vast majority of today's music is shit, compared to it. There's no reason to think that this cycle will stop with the kids today-- though the idea of hearing Britney Spears on an oldies station in a couple decades is rather amusing.
~Philly
I think everyone replying to this thread is missing one key point so I'm replying to the parent.
Consumers, in general, as compared to us techs and those used to technology, versus those who are well trained into consumerism, will buy a subscription based listening experience, not thinking about owning the music, hook, line, and sinker. Does anyone know how many people already subscribe to such services, both consumer and business, in other technologies? Think satellite radio, cable radio stations, sky angel, et cetera...
To those that don't understand the nature of the beast, understanding what can be done with a computer, it is already standard practice for them in other markets. Why would this market be different to them? They'll want to listen to music on their computer, they'll find a service based on those that are shoved at them, some call this advertising, picking the most shoved one, to try first, and not think twice about it.
Not that it should be that way, but that is the nature of consumerism. The herd will always go that way. Businesses know how to capitalize on it. We have been trying to teach the herd and stop them for a while. So why do we try?
Well, I would say it's time to pull ourselves away from them. We have the ability, all of our talents combined, to make music, videos, programs, biology, space craft, et cetera, as a community. Why should we care about the rest of the people if they don't care themselves?
Let's start in honesty the revolution that can change the world. We don't need the help of anyone else but ourselves!
My sig is as boring as you...
The key to success is to open many ways to play this music your purchased.
Subs do work. I think I'd call Rhapsody's ~700K subs per month @ $10 a reasonable success. Real has around a 30% Q-on-Q growth rate. And its radio-like license model means that it gets to keep far more of each $10 sub.
Let's say Rhapsody keeps (say) 40% of its revenue. That's ~ $30m per year.
Let's say Apple gets to keep $.05 of each song. At 1m a day that's ~ $18m per year.
So you see, the subs business is a good one to be in. Add in the revenues from the satellite subs, Napster's 200K monthly subs, and the fact that the telcos are salivating to offer music subs services across multiple devices profiles and aggregate the billing, and you see why the subs business is hot.
Napster may never eclipse Apple's pay-per-download download license gross, but its net take from the subs business could eclipse Apple's iTMS net.
Da Blog
I did a search on their page for "Beatles" and it said: So then I did a search for "The Beatles" and it says: That's going to be a deal breaker there for a LOT of people, besides the fact that they basically lied to me on my first search.
Actually, you can compare this to satellite radio. They both stop working when you stop paying. The cost per month is simular. They both stream music. The quality is simular. With Napster, you get the advantage of being able to listen to whatever you want when you want to (provided it's in Napster's library). You can also get copies of tracks to store on your computer and portable music player. With satellite, you get the option of streaming radio in your car, or a dedicated unit for your stereo, or the option of buying a pricy portable player. Not to mention more variety in the number of streams offered.
Perhaps Napster should try to convert satellite radio folks over? It may work pretty well, though it would be tough to get convert the people who use it in their cars.
As people have said above: You pay a monthly fee for access to their full catalog (which is hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of music) just like Rhapsody. The difference is that the illusion of having the actual song is stronger, as you can see it on your HDD in your library, unlike Rhapsody where its hidden in an ecrypted folder.
;)
I think this service is perfectly acceptable, and if Apple was offering it Im sure slashdot would be rejoicing. I think the difference between Itunes DRM and MS DRM is that MS DRM actually works, and is very effective at managing Digital Restrictions. I still have to see Hymn for Napster.
But Slashdot, remember, you can still use the Line-in hack
It needs to get a bit cheaper, but I already use Rhapsody (which works great with Total Recorder btw) and would consider using this service as it would be even easier to take my tunes with me.
Surur
Information is the location of things. Computation is moving things around.
Yeah, they changed their plans a *lot* too..
"eMusic offers three subscription plans:
eMusic Basic: $9.99 per month
40 MP3 downloads per billing month
Unlimited transfers
Unlimited CD burning
eMusic Plus: $14.99 per month
65 MP3 downloads per billing month
Unlimited transfers
Unlimited CD burning
eMusic Premium: $19.99 per month
90 MP3 downloads per billing month
Unlimited transfers
Unlimited CD burning
Once you are an eMusic subscriber, you will continue to be billed monthly until you cancel your subscription. "
When i was a subscriber, they implemented these changes and forced you onto one of the new plans - but they would not let me cancel until my 12 month subscription was up. *THAT* pissed me off to no end. They completely yanked the All-You-Can-Eat, limited it to 40 mp3s per *month* and then said "No, you cannot cancel. Bugger off!"
Unbelievable gall they had. I wrote them, told them how upset I was about their nerve, and cancelled the credit card that it was billing.
I don't follow your argument. Let's say that I own an iPod mini and I shop at iTMS, and I've bought 100 songs. So I've spent a total of $349 plus tax.
Now "something happens" to make iTMS/iPod a bad value proposition. What? What could happen?
Wallmart starts selling all their Windows DRM songs for $.50? How has this devalued by purchase? There really isn't a market for previously purchased songs, where I could recoup my investment, like one can with physical CDs, so it's not like the bottom dropped out on my "investment". I can still enjoy what I purchased.
Apple goes out of business and stops selling iPods (God forbid). Again, how does this effect my enjoyment of my purchase? I can still listen to the music on my iPod. If the battery eventually wears out, I purchase a replacement from a third party, like I was planning to anyway. The DRM songs won't stop playing because Apple no longer exists. The DRM isn't subscription based. The music doesn't die after a month. And I can still load MP3s onto the iPod.
Those are the only two examples I can think of, and in neither one do I "burn my investment".
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I can get it off eMule for free, with the same legality. I.e. none, shit all. This is NOT legal except within russia and other countries without restrictive copyright laws. "Authorized by the Russian music industry" = "Not authorized"
here is NO reason not to use this service.
Except one: it's not legal in the United States, Napster's target market and the only country that is relevant to this particular discussion. (Especially considering all of the tangents on "free use" and "copyright law" which directly refer to US law)
If you're going to violate the law, might as well go whole-hog and just download the stuff for free.
at least in my country.
slashdot.org is based in the United States; most contributors are from the United States; most English traffic on the internet has to do with the United States. We Americans can afford to be jingoistic and short-sighted as regards our country, but we're the only ones. I'm sorry you haven't realized this yet.
CD is my property, CD becomes family member's property.
But if this putative relative ever plays that CD and listens to that song, then that is a copyright violation. Likewise, if I can prove to a court that you gave them that CD with full knowledge that they were going to play back that song, then you are guilty of contributory copyright violation. You may as well have shared it on Kazaa.
Da Blog
>If so you're missing the point - YOU DO NOT GET TO KEEP THE SONGS. YOU DO NOT OWN THE SONGS. In a subscription service YOU WILL NEVER GET TO KEEP THE SONGS. That's the point of their buisiness model and their DRM.
It is so indeed. In case you're missing the point, the new idea is that it's pointless and stupid to own songs.
The iPod model is that you pay X dollars for the player and then spend incrementally (as long as you own that iPod) on Apple's Web site (to buy songs) - perhaps Y dollars every month.
The Napster models is that the expensive player doesn't matter - you just spend Y dollars every month.
To a person who buys some 15 songs a month, Napster and iPod would cost about the same.
If you buy more than 15 songs a month, it's cheaper to subscribe to Napster.
All you can eat the Napster way.
Sure, you don't own any of the songs, but what does it mean anyway - if you really want to own some songs you can buy them (for course, as a Microsoft user, not from Apple, but from some Microsoft-compatible store) and use Napster for the rest.
It's still cheaper and better than iPod's way as it gives you more choices.
> start whinning about how f*scked up their files are either because of the M$ DRM or a hardware issue and now "their" music is "gone".
That's the iPod user's problem, Napster users won't have such problems.
One thing that most people don't understand is that it is indeed stupid to own songs because all that copying and burning is so redundant and waste of time.
With today's technologies, all one needs to have are playlists and the music can be downloaded from wherever.
Apple, actually, did great so far, but it's easy to see that their product was evolutionary (they did right what others have been trying for years) but in its essence, iPod automatizes things that are so 90's - hoarding MP3s.
With Napster's service one will not have to carry around an MP3 player - you'll be able to play your music from wherever you are - at work, at home, from your mobile phone, or your walkman. That's the idea.
The utility of music is in the playing. You are the one who is misleading.This in no way is any kind of argument against what the previous poster said. People buy music in order to play it. They may, perhaps, become tired of it later, and resell it, but that in no way alters the reason that the music was bought in the first place.The funny thing, of course, is that you are arguing FOR his exact statement, while trying to refute it.
Which is to say, only the person who bought the CD can decide what that CD is worth to him, and therefore whether he should buy it in the first place (if the asking price is MORE than it is worth to the potential owner, then the owner doesn't buy it) and whether to, when he starts getting tired of it, sell it for $5 to a used CD place (if it is still worth more than $5, though less than $15, then he doesn't sell it).
Thus, only the owner (or potential owner) can decide what the CD is actually worth to him, and therefore whether it is worth purchasing.
In your 'brown rocks' example above, of course, you had it exactly backwards. The owner of the 'brown rocks' finds out what he can sell them for, and if their utility to him is above that number, then he doesn't sell them. And only the owner can ascribe that monetary value to the rocks... the value which enables him to decide whether it is worth selling them at any given price or not.
Oh, hell, I don't expect you to understand. You've got your head stuck in a brown rock mine.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.