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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 $10,000 to fill an iPod with songs downloaded from iTunes or with music converted to MP3 from newly purchased CDs, but there's a lot of downloadable and legit free music out there, not to mention Griffin's RadioShark.
Judging from cable and satellite radio subscription fees just keep rising and rising.
I would expect nothing less from the music rental services..
I have a feeling that renting your music will be harder and harder to get stuff you want. (like some bands charging more than 9.99$ for an itunes album..)
itunes "playlist" which users post there mixes is very clever. When you select a song, you can search for playlists with that song on it (more songs you might like..)
However the napster "try" part is a way to discover new music I might or might not shell out cash for. Then again alot of bands have sites with free downloadable mp3s..
If my free 3 month trial of XM radio has taught me anything (I bought a car), there is a lot of music out there I don't care for.
...about Napster. Explicitly, anyway.
Once you stop paying your $15/month or $180/year, which will likely become $17, and $20, and so on, in the future, you no longer have access to your music.
If you want to keep it forever - or burn it to CD or use it on something other than an approved device - you have to buy it for a dollar. Just like with iTunes.
Also, that money you're spending on Napster is 180 songs, or 18 albums per year, on the iTunes music store, that you get to keep forever. I suppose it just all depends on your usage style.
That, and whether you want to use the hard-drive based music player with 92% market share.
To say nothing of the fact that Apple will introduce a subscription plan if they need to, anyway.
"Is Napster to Go the future of digital music distribution?"
No, FTP servers and underground P2P are. Morons.
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.
...not iPod compatible. Thats a show-stopper for the 20 MILLION iPod users out there.
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.
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.
My digital rights don't need management.
I tried their 14 trial. What a turd.
The interface is clunky, everything is slow, many songs (usually one from each album) isn't available unless you pay extra and the downloading is slow.
I stopped using my 14 day trial about day 5.
I might consider using a similar service, but it would have to be put together better and it would have to have a wider selection of music. For example, there's a band called X that I really like. They put out 6 or 7 albums, and only one of them is available on Napster. Sure, they aren't super current and they were never huge, but they were a big enough band that their catalog should be available.
Ah, slashdot.
Where the "screw and subvert legitimate businesses and content owners at all costs" attitude is considered "Insightful".
Something I think that gets overlooked in all of this, is that hte iPod can function as more than just a music player. It can be (and from what i've read around here on /. is) used as portable storage for files photos etc. Wasn't LOTR saved to iPods during filming? Along with owning an iPod, there comes utility as well as function. I have actually gotten up to around 8000-8500 tracks on my ipod. Mostly because I've been collecting music since I was 16, not to mention my friends music, and checking out napster when it was illegit. I'm only 26 now. Maybe I'm uncommon, but I don't tend to delete music just because it's not in style anymore (Hall & Oates anyone?). Interestingly enough, I find that my 40gig iPod isn't nearly big enough. I'm going to eventually get a 60gig (or bigger iPod) sometime this year, because in addition to playing music anywhere I go, I can plug it into any computer and share information. Whether it's for helping a friend fix their computer, sharing the latest linux distro, a tv show, a movie, or whatever I may want/need at any given point. Saying that the iPod isn't worth it because it would take 10,000$ to fill it using iTunes, is incredibly short sighted and extremely misleading. Not to mention the fact that just because you have an iPod or any digital music player for that matter dosen't mean that you have to buy music online anyways or be locked into iTunes (ephpod anyone?). If I didn't have such a large music collection, I'd still want an ipod or some kind of digital music player because it simplifies things. Why carry around 20 cds (200$) in a large case (another 10-30$), and potentially scratch them (or the copies I've made), take a chance on having them stolen (that really sucks, I had 80 cds stolen from my car in chicago one time after comdex), or just in general mess with it. I can slip my music into my pocket and go. About the only thing I can't do, is let someone borrow a CD that I may be listening to, but I can always make a note to burn one for them later.
I'm not an apple fanboy (though I'm getting a new powerbook after having used PC's for the past 10 years now) I have to say there is definately a coolness factor in owning it as well as just the way it feels in your hand.