Slashdot Mirror
Napster To Be Acquired by Google?
YesSir writes "The New York Post claims that Google is considering an alliance or possibly an acquisition of Napster. Rather then starting their own, Google could jump start their music service with the help of Napster. Napster's share price soared more than 30 percent as a result of the report that they are in discussions with Google." From the article: " The company in January told Reuters that it was not on the block. 'The company is not looking to be sold, the management is not looking to step out. It's simply not true,' a Napster spokesman said on Jan. 23. Last week, Napster, founded by college student Shawn Fanning and was once synonymous with the pirating of music, laid off 10 managers." More information available from C|Net. Update: 01/31 19:16 GMT by Z : A Reuters article has Google denying that it has plans to acquire Napster or start a music store anytime soon.
This "Napster" is not the company founded by Shawn Fanning. This is the company that was formerly known as Roxio that sold off all of their software assets to Sonic and then hired Shawn Fanning and bought the name Napster.
This company has been mismanaged from the moment it was spun off from Adaptec. This would not surprise me in the least, but unfortunately it is probably a really good move for the current Napster folks. They will make out like bandits.
Google already came out and denied any involvement with napster, according to this
Google said: "We have no plans to acquire Napster, nor do we have plans to develop a music store at this time." 13:01 EST
I have faced the inevitable and sewn "Google" into the tag on my underwear.
Puts a whole new spin on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" search, eh?
Is this only news because Google is supposedly not buying Napster?
How is Napster even relevant anymore?
Raise your hand if you use Napster's service.
Now everyone who has iTunes, raise your hand.
Napster was the first on the market with a pay-for-music service and they still couldn't turn that into a leading position.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Napster, founded by college student Shawn Fanning...
He must be having trouble chossing a major. I suggest something involving computers.
When the iTunes store first opened, a lot of people at /. bitched and moaned about how terrible it was that you were forced to buy individual songs or albums. Who would want to do that when you can pay a monthly fee and listen to everything in the catalog with a subscription service?
As it turns out, a lot of people actually.
The "all you can eat" method sounds great in theory, but the tracks from the major subscription services are often saddled with layers of rules and restrictions well beyond those you find with iTunes. Extra fees for moving them to portable music devices, extra fees for burning them to CDs and oh yeah...when you stop paying your monthly fee, everything goes away. Hundreds of dollars over years gone with one missed payment. All that money and you own absolutely *nothing*.
iTunes is not perfect, iTunes has problems. The artists do get far, far less than they should, but that is due to the way the contracts are written between the labels and the artists. Yes, you are restricted to playing (but not storing) the songs to any 5 computers at once (which you can change as often as you like). No, Steve Jobs can't lower the prices to 10 cents a track like you so often hear the uninformed claim. Yes, you can put the songs on as many iPods as you want without restriction. No, you can't get higher-bitrate tracks even though that should be an option. Etc.
At the end of the day, however...you can buy one song for 99 cents and that song will be there for you to play today, tomorrow and next year, the year after, etc. Wherever you want, whenever you want. You can buy that one song, buy 1,000 songs it doesn't matter. You only pay when you want to pay, and you don't feel compelled to justify what you spend each month, because unlike Napster and the Yahoo! Music Store, you only get what you pay for, and you only pay for what you get.
The dominance of the iPod, and its incompatibility with the other services is only part of the reason iTunes' competition is withering on the vine. People want to feel like they are left with something at the end of the day, and iTunes delivers that better than anyone else.