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Napster Blames Microsoft for Lack of Sales
An anonymous reader writes "AustralianIT is reporting that Napster has blamed their inability to compete with Apple's iTunes on technical glitches from Microsoft. From the article: '"There is no question that their execution has been less than brilliant over the last 12 months," Napster chairman and chief executive Chris Gorog said at a New York conference. "Our business does rely on Microsoft's digital rights management software and our business model also relies on Microsoft's ecosystem of device manufacturers."'"
"Our business does rely on Microsoft..."
Now if that doesn't set off warning bells...
Are they sure it wasn't the spooky commercials they were playing on late night TV a while back? Those things still give me the creeps.
Maybe not
You can't copy the songs to an iPod. At least not without jumping through hoops.
They should do what Apple did! Spend years building a custom OS to sell music on.
Devise, Repair, Solve, Build
Apple doesn't allow that so you can't.
v irgin/
e ction=business&id=1769
"Virgin demands Apple license iTunes DRM"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/06/apple_vs_
"iTunes, DRM and competition law"
http://www.reckon.co.uk/open/iTunes
"Apple Avoids French Courts Opening FairPlay DRM"
http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?s
I know Apple is seeing as gods here and this will be modded down to oblivious but hey face it, in this field they are as monopolistic as microsoft. Why is it so hard for some companies to play nice with each other ?
No, they do not. They have always had the option of implementing their own scheme.
No, in practise they haven't unless they
a) want to get into the DRM system market, which requires a completely different business model than being a music service. The two big ones (MS's WMA and Apple's FairPlay) have other business reasons to be there, Napster doesn't.
b) release an iPod-a-like. Otherwise they have to go after all sorts of different hardware manufacturers and end up exactly where they are today, only now they are the ones taking all the costs of spreading the DRM system.
Apple has the one shop (iTMS), one application (iTunes), one player (iPod), (one Reich?) methodology. Napster is lightyears away from doing that. The best they could do would be to blow a ton of cash on being a half-assed Microsoft.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I agree that Napster is indelibly associated with piracy, even though it's been years since such a thing existed. That funky headphone-wearing-cat will always be a pirate flag to those of us who were around for Napster's glory days. This new company's early advertising promised some badass 'tude, but couldn't match their ads and certainly couldn't live up to the original Napster. Their more recent advertising -- "Have everything - Own nothing" -- was just an annoying reminder that the real Napster is long gone.
Wow a company is blaming low music sales on something other then piracy
As a funny side note:
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Well, Somehow I don't think so...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
"Really, the only hope for Napster, Rhapsody, and Real is to create a new DRM standard and try to convince the music companies and the hardware makers to adopt it. Microsoft's attempt to do so has already failed."
I love this comment, along with all the pro-apple comments that are going on in this thread. But consider this: If Microsoft was the monopoly in this field and other companies (like the beloved Napster brand) were having trouble competing because they were having to "get by" without the Microsoft system, everyone would be up in arms and demanding MS used open standards, bashing DRM, preaching the name of the small, independent companies fighting against MS tyrany..
Apple is using a proprietary DRM system - both bad words on slashdot - and the small companies are having trouble competing because of it. Why aren't we complaining? Oh yes... because no matter what the situation, Apple is always right and MS is always wrong. I forgot.
they should revert to their old businessmodel...
Napster is synonymous with free downloads. Not paid for ones.
"...let's blame used CDs."
They blew their wad on that way too soon.
Back in the mid90s, the RIAA decided to employ their highest grossing artist to go around and try to explain why Used CDs were killing the industry. Garth Brooks made a GREAT pitch to the Walmart crowd -- all of whom realized that a man with more mansions than Saddam had palaces wasn't doing half as bad as they were knowing their doublewide could get repossessed and hauled away at any point.
I stood behind Metalica when they stood up against Napster -- there is *NEVER* an excuse to take something someone else created and duplicate it to the point that you are essentially a competitor that left unchecked can put you out of business -- and done so by your fans.
But when Brooks was doing this years earlier, he decided to change a paradigm that had been legal for over a thousand years...'he' didn't even want his stuff in libraries. If you want rid of cd, you needed to just throw it in the trash. No doctrine of first sale that has always been in copyright.
But no one took this seriously and there were laws enacted to actually strenghten the idea of selling used physical media like this. And that is why I still buy a majority of my music via CD and its subset of used CD. I don't see any prevaling need to be allowed to sell my iTunes purchases -- I knew going into it that the paradigm was such that I tied to the music -- but CDs -- no one is going to make this argument again for a long time.
Again, the music industry blew their wad on this years ago...
The real problem is Microsofts DRM just does not work.
It doesn't work with either of my mp3 players even though they claim to support it.
It doesn't work very well if you want to burn cd's either.
(( You eat up your copy license when the track is converted not when the CD is burned. This causes several problems not least you select a buch of tracks to burn, media player converts them all eating up a "copy" for each track then decides there is not enough room on the CD and bails out -- 16 rights to copy which you bought and paid for are trashed )).
I do not own a single piece of Apple hardware yet I use Itunes for downloading music, or, just buy (or borrow) the CD.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Because iTunes allows people to do what they've always wanted to do, which is buy music. Napster's business model consists of "pay us each month and you can listen to any of the music we own, but stop paying us and you lose it all." The only people on earth who thought that was a good idea were Napster's accountants. It's not even rent-to-own, it's just pay-to-listen. They're trying to market it like it's iTunes, but it's really more like XM Radio without the nifty receiver.
"I know Apple is seeing as gods here and this will be modded down to oblivious but hey face it, in this field they are as monopolistic as microsoft." You're not going to be modded down because you point out Apple is a monopoly. You are going to be modded down because you fail to understand that being a monopoly in and of itself is not a bad thing. What Apple has done is entirely _opt-in_.
The problem here is that there is no Open DRM standard. So any company building players and having a music system would love to use their own free DRM system that they don't have to pay royalties on. Apple succeeded in doing this. Everyone else decided to feed at the Microsoft booth. Instead of whining, Real, Napster et al, should band together and build an open royalty free DRM and give it two HW manufacturers and run their services on that, rather than complaining that the big two won't interoperate. Which Apple really can't do without cutting their own throat.
Apple really needs to maintain Fairplay exclusively or cede yet another market to Microsoft. Remember when Palm had a PDA monopoly? Remember when Sony owned Video Games. Apple is just desperately trying to hang on to that one niche that Microsoft hasn't crushed with it's computing monopoly and mountain of Cash (Yet).
Apple won't license fairplay for the same reason they don't license OSX, they make money selling hardware. What happens if they license fairplay?
1: Stiffer competition in hardware sales, in fact Apple will find itself at a competitive disadvantage, as competing players will have fairplay and playforsure.
2: Apple forced to license play4sure from microsoft. Because of the competitive disadvantage they would be in, Apple would be forced to licence ($$$) play4sure from Microsoft. Can you see how distastefull this is.
Now where are we. Apple has now lost it's competitive advantage and was forced to pay money to arch rival computer monopolist microsoft, just to stay competitive. No wonder they won't open Fairplay up.
So music services, quit your damn whining and make a free, open DRM solution available to both music services and HW companies and break free of the big two.
The RIAA insisted on DRM. And Apple responded. Now Apple controls the market, much to the chagrins of the RIAA. But hey, they wanted DRM. And don't expect Apple to drop it anytime soon. They have discovered what DRM really means. Its not copy protection. Its vendor lock-in. If the RIAA really wants digital music to succeed, they need to drop DRM now. That will level the playing field both in online stores and digital players.
Now go into your average electronic store and OOOOOH, a dozen different brands of portable media players. Even different formats. Minidisc, AAC, MP3, WMA, CD, WAV.
Yeah sure, the iPod's sell best BUT that is not what makes a monopoly. Nobody in their right mind would call Dell a monopoly even if they are one of the biggest players in the market.
Apple has done nothing to stop other players from entering the field. It doesn't have exclusive contracts with the artists (you can still buy their CD's even if no other online store happens to carry them).
Oh and the biggest proof that Apple isn't MS. iTunes works on windows. Does MS drm work on apple? So Apple doesn't even abuse its non-monopoly just big market share to force people to use its OS.
Frankly Apple can be bashed for a lot but calling it a monopoly is just silly.
Oh and the smaller players aren't having troubles at all. Just ask the iRivers of this world or the creative labs.
No the ones having problems are the ones who banked on MS winning an easy victory and now finding that people will not buy that MS drm crap.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What kills me is the number of posters lighting into Apple for having a closed system. And that's what it is. The Mac, closed system. iPod iTunes, closed system.
But you've got Yahoo, Napster and 50 million PlaysForSure groups complaining that Apple won't license FairPlay to them, so that they can compete. And I don't blame Apple. Call me a fanboy if you want.
If I were Apple, I'd do the same damn thing. None of those who want to get in on things have supported Apple's hardware very well or at all, have they? Yahoo hasn't upgraded their version of Messenger for Mac in 3 years. How much do you want to bet that none of these stores supports Mac users? I have a non iPod branded music player; can I go to their sites and download music? No. Microsoft doesn't even MAKE Media Player for Mac anymore, and when they did, it sucked. And how ironic it is that the iPod craze is fueling Apple hardware sales?
The initial iPod wasn't even PC compatible. iTMS either. My only choice for stateside mainstream purchased music was iTunes. They were created in part, to offer to Mac users what PC users were getting. They were getting it poorly, but hey. But as usual, the minute you open up your product to those who poo poo it and talk about Mac users as fringe players it's a different story. The iPod takes off, and people are living the iLife.
Apple licensed FairPlay (in some form) to Motorola. There was a long relationship there; up until Motorola spun off Freescale, Moto chips were driving Macs. Same with HP. For all it's flaws, HP imaging hardware always had decent Mac support. Apple licensed the HP branded iPod. HP canned the agreement, not Apple. That tells me Apple is willing to deal with others. BUt they are under no obligation to deal with those who aren't bringing shit to the table or halfway support their hardware.
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
Then their is the pricing model. Anyone with a brain knows that this is worse even then the bookclub model (I don't know if americans have it so let me explain, bookclubs sign people up on the street (nowadays mostly immigrants or other people who ain't very street smart) to be able to buy books/cds/dvds cheaply from their catalog. The scam? You have to buy 2 books every period minimum and the contract lasts for 2 years. Since their catalog is really limited you end up buying stuff you do not want).
At least you get to keep the books from bookclub after you cancel (and paid for two years worth of stuff you don't want).You loose all your napster music if you ever cancel.
You are also locked in to only using their service with hardware that supports their DRM. It only works on Windows. (iTunes works on Mac and Windows) Oh and the format used is often reviewed as the worst of the bunch.
There is also no 'gifting' it. You can buy somebody some iTunes songs for their birthday. But napster? Oh, wow, one month of listening to music except I can't listen to them on my iPod, gee thanks.
As for their complaint that MS software ain't up to it. Well fucking duh. NOBODY uses MS software. How do you think the whole winamp model works eh? Because MS own software is to crap for words.
So you got a name that lost its meaning, trying to sell stuff people can't use, by artist people don't want, for a price people are not prepared to pay, on conditions that people don't like, using software people loathe, to be played on a tiny handfull of devices that people don't like.
Gee, yeah that sounds like a good business plan to me.
Then again all this MS funded fud is not meant to be a real business. MS doesn't have to own the online music store market. All it has to do is delay anyone else from doing so until inertia takes over.
In fact that is what Napster seems to be banking on. That MS can pull another IE and that somehow their inferior product will become the norm.
IE vs Netscape happened because IE was bundled. Perhaps MS should sponsor Dell to give a free MP3 player with their PC's? Pre loaded with Napster?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Every time I see these "I will get modded down for criticizing Apple" posts, it never is. Would people stop with the whining about the Apple love on Slashdot?
Apple's "monopoly" is opt-in. Apple isn't signing illegal OEM deals to prevent the shipment of competing products, the way Microsoft did in the 90s. You're free to buy any player you want at the local Wal-mart.
"Sufferin' succotash."