Business Models: Napster to Go vs. iPod

CNet offers an interesting comparison between Napster to Go and iTunes. For $15 a month, Napster to Go offers over 1 million songs (access to which lasts as long as subscription is valid), while songs for iPod must be purchased and last 'forever' (but it takes about $10,000 to fill an iPod). Is Napster to Go the future of digital music distribution? Would moving to an all-you-can-eat model hurt iPod business and balance the power among authors, studios, hardware makers and consumers?" It might take $10,000 to fill an iPod with songs downloaded from iTunes or with music converted to MP3 from newly purchased CDs, but there's a lot of downloadable and legit free music out there, not to mention Griffin's RadioShark.

Comments

Napster can be iTunes too.

[rnicey]

It's worth mentioning that you can spend 99c / track at Napster too if you really like that model. So at Napster you have more choice. FWIW I think Napster is easier to use too.

Re:DRM quality

[AnFraX]

Pretty much all of the methods to remove DRM include re-encoding the WMA to something else. This takes even more quality from the recording than is already missing in the Napster version (they are encoded at 128kbps). Furthermore, it is damnned near impossible to do a digital re-encode nowadays. Microsoft has revoked the WMA-DRM licence from all the media players that allowed it to happen, including all but the most recent version of Winamp that only allows encrypted WMA output through DirectSound. No more using DSP plugins to write the data to the disk in a different format. The best you can hope for is something like Tunebite, which records the analog signal coming from your soundcard, which is not very good at all.

Re:You can fill it for free.

[A Drake Man]

But that 14 day FREE Trial only gives you 11 MB to download. It wasn't like that always, but once the news got around on Slashdot about how to rip the tracks, they shut it down.

Re:You can fill it for free.

[LokieLizzy]

That was so last month. Napster enforced an 11mb-download limit for the 14-day trial after too much buzz spread about the winamp ripping device.

Re:Neither Napster nor iPod - just FREE GOOD MUSIC

[MP3Chuck]

Speaking of free good music ... I compiled a list of sites that host indie music, nearly all of which have completly free downloads. You can see it here. Worth checking out for anyone whose listening habits aren't limited to Top 40 Radio...

Re:Until your subscription expires...

[MoneyT]

Certificates are local files, pulled from Apple servers. If Apple were to go bankrupt, assuming they didn't issue a universal authenticator or provide a method for removing the DRM, there are already programs to allow one to transfer their certificates without a net connection. Of course, even failing that, there's always the option to burn the files to audio CD and re-rip them.