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Napster Going Back to Free Downloads
conq writes "BusinessWeek reports on Napster's latest move to allow the download of free music. This time the service will be supported by online ads." From the article: "With Napster's new free service, 'we'll be able to help millions of people get out of the world of 30-second clips and of having to buy individual songs,' Gorog says. 'I don't think there's anything better we could do to turn people onto the pleasures of unlimited, legal access to music.'"
Just signed up. It works GREAT! Wonder how long it will last.
Funnypics
is it going to be music worth hearing?
You can only listen to one song at most five times. Two million songs times five leads to ten million songs before it's useless. Give me iTunes free downloads any day.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Isn't this the sort of business practice that led to the dot com boom in the first place? They're going to give everything away and hope that advertising money eventually catches up. Something tells me this isn't going to work. Maybe they'll ad a feature where they pay you for each advertiser's banner you click on.
Amazing! If this lasts then my music library will become legal... not that it /wasn't/ legal in the first place, I just mean it will become *more* legal than it was... Err...
"On May 1, the Los Angeles-based company announced a new Web-based version of its software, along with a new service that lets users listen to any song among its catalog of 2 million songs absolutely free -- so long as they don't want to listen to any one song more than five times." I don't expect them to have much success finding a larger userbase under those terms.
Will they let me listen to standup comedy? It's rare that I ever would want to listen to the same sketch more than five times anyway.
The new service allows users to listen to any song for free up to five times - and it's streamed over Napster's site; you're not downloading anything. I think it's a great marketing move and it works perfectly, but Napster's not returning to the Glory Days, boys.
I think this is really great news for me and for Apple. I can see getting a lot of use out of this, but not the way Napster intends. Now I can preview the full song a couple of times, then I can go to iTunes and buy it for my iPod, Sweet! Also, let the hacking begin to record the audio stream from your five free plays.
I spoke too fast:
:(
(from the FAQ)
"Can I Download Songs From the Napster Free Service?"
You must purchase songs to download them to your computer using the Napster Free service.
"Can I Really Listen to Napster Music for Free?"
Yes. Here's how it works. You can listen to every track in our 2,000,000 song catalog up to 5 times...
So it's not really free. It's just like Pandora or Last.FM but with a price tag. Misleading Slashdot title
So... How exactly do I download the free songs? I can stream them just fine on the website but I can't figure out how to download the Napster client. Does someone have a linky?
Well since I love it so, I'll pimp it bit :)
Try http://www.pandora.com/ it is absolutely amazing for discovering new music. Not really a replacement for this feature from Napster, but quite complementary.
LetterRip
'I don't think there's anything better we could do to turn people onto the pleasures of unlimited, legal access to music.'"
Where I come from, "unlimited" doesn't mean "five or less."
Gorog must gotten his definition of "unlimited" from the same dictionary Gates and Ballmer used to define "innovation" and "choice."
So how long until someone finds a way around that limitation?
Assuming it's completely free one can use this to listen to songs and then use it in conjunction with itunes if they truly enjoy a song.
Hmmm... Pie...
I've been using it quite a bit today. While you cannot download with the free service, streaming seems to work quite well. I even listened to an album, and the intersitial ads (which had no audio) only came up four times while listening to a 13 track album. Plus, it's great to be able to put a link into a message board or email when talking about a certain track.
I think it's a good thing. Now, if they can keep it from being annoying even after they have some advertisers, it will be amazing.
Tech bubbles are awesome.
I hear a lot of people lamenting the current growth of a new tech bubble. While there are many bad things that come from tech bubbles, I think everybody's forgetting the good stuff that comes as well. In particular I'm thinking of all the stuff that companies start giving away for free or for supercheap, whether its because they think they can cover their costs with ad revenues, because they want to build users or just because they've got VC to burn and no business plan, tech startups just love to give people free shit and I think that's awesome.
Yeah... What's with the Flash?
Regardless of whether or not the new free try model increases revenue, interoperability issues will still keep me away. If I can't play it on my digital player, why would this interest me. Maybe people who figure out how to pirate the songs will love the service and thats about it.
http://www.commodore69.com/
My God, this is at least as original one click shopping. I must go out and patent it. Now none of y'all get the idea of stealing it from me!
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Does it run Linux?
The above is most likely humour. Slashdot foot icon goes here.
at least while there's IRC and allofmp3.com!
Check out this news' site's article and online poll about whether people are inclined to use Napster's new free "download" (sic. it's actually on free streaming, not downloading--you have to PAY for any downloads). http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may 2006/tc20060502_659394.htm
When I took the poll, more than 80% were saying they wouldn't use Napster's new service.
The early bird may get the worm but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese.
Anyone try this with audio hijack on OS X yet? I'm not going to try it unless I get permanent copies.
I see all these sites trying to get me to download "free" songs but there is ALWAYS a catch, and it is always a catch that makes it not worth it. Here at RIT we have CTRAX - same thing. Free music, as long as you don't want to keep it longer than a month or burn it to a CD. RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, etc.: We want to KEEP what we buy and what we do with it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. Until they all realize this, pirating will stay on the rise. If you don't believe me, keep making those stupid EULAs and coming up with DRM garbage, and see what happens.
. . .Replay music.
http://www.applian.com/replay-music/index.php
But doing so would be wrong, so don't do it. Ever.
Just tried the streaming service in firefox (a major complaint of yahoo music) and it worked great... Looks like they learned a thing or two...
You can't go back to something that you never did.
The company that wears the napster costume isn't the original napters any more than I am.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
garbage. Even if I could rip this straight from the stream, I wouldn't want to.
not worth hijacking and would rather hear a 30 second 128K acc file anyway.
10 million songs * 3 minutes/song = 57 years.
I demand at least 70 years of free music.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
How is this different from what winamp has been doing? Winamp also allows you to stream music and music videos. The videos are even ad-supported; plus you can watch/listen as many times as you want. Perhaps the number of artists/songs is more diverse?
I think this could be a very useful service. One of the main defenses I hear from music pirates is that they are trying the music, and usually buy later quite a bit of what they download. With a service like this, why bother pirating when you can legally download a song/album, listen to it 5 times and decide if you want to purchase it?
Here's an idea: lose the Napster brand
Six years ago Napster was hot. Everyone who matters (to the music industry) used it. The brand was synonymous with "listen to whatever you want whenever you want". However, the digital music market changes quickly. Napster is now synonymous with "shitty overpriced service". If they can come up with a truly great service they are better off starting from scratch than slapping a Napster label on it. If they succeed it will be despite the brand.
By somehow, I'm betting that it still won't be what Napster was in the glory days: a way to get old niche music that was out of publication and liked by me but not that many other people.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
"BOOHOOS! The bad nasty manses don't wants me twos save teh muzak I listen 2 online. OH NOS!"
Look, it's not exactly rocket surgery:
Use a simple application to record the sound output of your PC sound card. Click "record" just before playback starts and click "stop" when the song ends.
Most of these apps let you name the file after you click STOP. You can usually set the quality to your preference - but if it's dished out at 192Kb/s then you'd obviously want to record at no greater than 192Kb/s.
This would be just the same as recording from the radio - sans the stupid cassette tapes. It takes like an additional 5 seconds to name the song, and specify where to save it.
Good Lord - stop bitching!
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Shhhhhh... Lest the mod 5 slashdot effect ruin it...
I agree , it is pretty good. Like radio without the Djs..
I think this is a good move for Napster. However I don't agree with them charging an extra $5 so you can play the music on a portable music player (From the article: It costs $15 if the songs are to be transferred to a portable music player.). Why should Napster charge people more so they can download non-DRM music (I'm assuming that songs downloaded under the normal $10 a month subscription have some sort of DRM on them. Can anyone give me any details on that?)? Still I hope that this new tactic will help Napster get back on top.
I'll be satisfied with a year of good music. My guess is there's not enough.
Favorite quote: "
Napster selling downloads is like Netscape selling web browsers. Hard to do when your leading competitor can give away the same thing because they make their money selling something else (Apple: iPods, Microsoft: Windows).
No, I am not interested in "free" "music" that I cannot listen to (In Linux).
I want to pay for single mp3 or ogg files that I can play whereever.
Really, I want to buy music? Does no one sell it?
This proves that piracy was never the issue, and the RIAA knows it. The real issue has always been that digital distribution eventually renders the RIAA member companies irrelevant. View this as an early desparation move. Maybe they're even moving early enough to stay a little bit relevant for the long term.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
The article says Napster isn't compatible with ipods? Is this true of their pay service to download music as well? What format do they use? Ogg? MPC?
If you're 1337 enough to use linux, you're 1337 enough to use usenet.
>Look, it's not exactly rocket surgery:
Are you saying you don't have to be a brain scientist to figure this out?
Internet Music Streaming - Totally NEW
I have nothing to say.
They're quasi-legal, probably honestly legitimate within Russia (at least insofar as Russia has any copyright law and enforces what it does have), and using it from within the U.S. seems to actually be a Customs violation and not a copyright one. Basically what you're doing is the same thing as going to Russia, buying a Beatles album (since nothing before 1974 or so is apparently under copyright there) and bringing it back into the U.S. So the government would have to catch you; the RIAA can't sue you directly, which is their M.O. for intimidation right now.
This is according to the learned scholars at Wikipedia, so by all means draw your own conclusions, but I think the point is that allofmp3.com is, for the moment, basically untouchable. I have no doubt that one of the many things the RIAA will work into its next law that it gets passed (with the help of their pet Congress-weasels) is to make it a capital offense to download content from another country with weaker copyright laws of the U.S., if that content would be illegal in the U.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allofmp3#Legality_in
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
That's okay, but the RIAA demands that you wait at least 70 years for free music.
English is easier said than done.
I'm from Brazil and when I try to listen a music it shows:
"We're sorry..
Napster's free music service is currently only available in the United States.
You can still listen to 30-second clips."
They could be warned me before I signed up =\
As of yet the record labels won't let anyone do this. I can tell you for a fact that napster fought the labels to let them sell content in MP3 format without any DRM attached. They also fought with the labels over the 5 song limit. Every online music service is bascially a compromise between the labels and the distributors, and the labels usually get what they want. They mandated that napster use the windows DRM and therefore are able to control the use of the content, even on portable players. The bad news is that windows DRM is lacking in certain areas, especially on portable players (hence no real decent ipod competitor...even though some of the new samsungs are pretty sweet). Anyway, people need to stop blaming the distributors and start thinking about the labels they support if they really want to change things. Independent labels are way more relaxed about the distrubution of online content, and usually have better music. Unfortunately a vast majority of this country whose scope of vision extends just past their nose are incapable of finding anything outside of what is shoved down their throats.
It's amazing, isn't it? We're not asking for cheap music... hell, charge more for it than the DRM versions, if you want! We just want music that doesn't use DRM, preferably using the patent-free Vorbis codec.
There's clearly a demand for this, yet it is something that no one is selling, and that isn't because they just haven't discovered that people want it yet...
Welcome to the real world, where everyone isn't *you*. I'm on dialup (no choice here), so this is a *useful* service. Perfectly fine for sampling. As it might be to the other 45% of the US population that is still on dialup from choice (or usually it is just unobtanium to get anything else).
And no thanks, I have no desire to go move to the dirty filthy crime ridden expensive termite-hive cities just to get broadband. Been there, done that, no thanks. My tradeoff (just one of them) is my food budget is more than 50% home grown, direct from the extensive garden. A traffic jam to me is a couple of folks stopped to talk for a minute on the road next to each other, big deal, like once a month or something. I used to do the bus/train or traffic jam routine, broadband isn't worth it. I want to go swimming or boating, 1/4 mile away, nice lake. Want to go shoot real guns, not video game fake guns, walk outside, set-up target, blast away. And stuff like that.
Priorities, every person has a different one. I like music, but those "normal" massive size music or even worse movie downloads have resulted in me not ever downloading, just not worth it tying up the bandwith. Now, got a choice. neat. This is a useful service to a lot of people, and has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread, it is possible to save it to file. Granted, not ultra hifi, but I would imagine it is comparable to my crappy shirt pocket FM radio and earbud I paid a dollar for,*full retail* which is what I usually listen to music with when I am outside.
It's streaming only. And not even 128k?
"Nurse. Hand me a scalpel and 80CCs of WD-40... Stat!"
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
but only for exceptionally low values of "unlimited."
Good idea!
If it was 1998, that is.
I always thought it would be funny if Apple offered a 15 second high resolution (24 bits/sample or something 'clip' of the song that is actually the whole song sped up to fit in 15 seconds). Slow it down and voila, you have a 'clip' that is technically under the allowable preview time. I don't know enough to say that that would have enough sample resolution to render good audio when slowed back down, but it's a funny thought.
now for a worthless scientific attempt:
assuming 3 minute average song: 3 min * 60s/min * 44000samples/second = 7,920,000 samples. So if you shortened that to 15 seconds, 528,000 samples/second would be necessary to retain 100% quality. Assuming you could go to say 70% and still sound good, that would be 369,600 samples/second.. That would translate to basically 370Khz.. Not sure if I'm on the right track or not, but it seems like if you were willing to have a very big file you could maybe do it?
Kazaa
From a recent post, I believe congress wants to ban streaming mp3s. This could kill Napster's new service. Also, by letting people listen to an entire song just once could be too much, from a legal perspective. Play once, pipe it through to Audacity, or an equivalant program, then convert it to mp3 or ogg and you're good to go. Granted, you have to synch Audacity and the song and make sure there are no skips or system beeps/alerts. This, however, is the whole use-a-tape-to-record-off-the-radio game come full circle and updated with modern technology.
There are no uninteresting things. There are only uninterested people.
Look, it's not exactly rocket surgery: Use a simple application to record the sound output of your PC sound card.
The optimal thing to do is capture the original stream - a process called "stream ripping" - if you want to retain sound quality. If you just record the WAV out from your soundcard, you'll be recording the decompressed signal (PCM = 16 bit, 44100 Hz, 1411.2 kbps) and then have to reconvert it back to mp3 (or other lossy compression format). The result of this process (known as transcoding) will be even lower quality than the original stream. (which may not sound too good in the first place)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcoding
Tho if your hearing and/or your music playback hardware isn't great, then you might not ever notice the difference.
i could listen to Civ IV's openingmenu.mp3 forever!
You can get pure unadulterated mp3s at bleep.com. You have to like music on the warp label and similar, but if you don't, you really should :) Bleep's whole point is not to treat the customer as a criminal.
Actually I think it's just great! It's essentially a form of radio-on-demand, supported by ads.
It solves a problem I had despaired of solving -- when I (or my girlfriend and I) get nostalgic and want to hear some long-forgotten song again, which maybe I don't have in my library, I can now head over to Napster.com, download it and listen at radio-quality a couple of times, and feel good.
If I really like it I can buy it, but sometimes I just wanted to hear it again. Or settle a bet. Or remind someone that a song exists.
If I really like it and I want it for myself and I don't want to buy it, well, we have a word for people like that. Anyone complaining bitterly that they can't get any full-quality product they want for free forever should complain to Adam Smith, not to Napster.
Sorry to be a troll but emusic.com is simply the best. 50 free downloads not streams, and a massive catologue.
The music is so low quality that it's hardly worth it - 32kbps mono, 22kHz? No thanks.
For anybody who is actually interested in extracting the music from the Flash files, you can use a utility like HugFlash to do it.
Hello, I'm a Slashdotter and love free things as well, I downloaded Naspter to try it *out*, only to find *out* that it only work in USA, I'm from South African does this mean I can't have access to Free US music, this su$ks. Regards jongi
I don't care, I have torrents.
Or use last.fm: it does amaroK, which will score you some points with Slashdot's Linux-lover-crowd.
And another thing! Why oh why do soldiers suddenly feel that they have such a big part in fighting wars? They're completely replaceable cogs in a much bigger wheel, but every veterans day, there they are, reaping all the credit for wars they didn't even start! I didn't see them disengaging any diplomatic negotiations or refusing to cooperate with any ambassadorial deliberations. Their government took nearly all the risk in hiring them, paying for their training, providing them with equipment, all they did was stand up and belt out a few bullets. Yet people seem to feel that soldiers play a big part in the outcome of war. Yeah, as if!
I use sndrec32 and grab whatever I want.. and even convert it to mp3 with sndrec
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
David Letterman once in the 90's came up with a gag that best described the whole MP3 paranoia the recording industry went into. He showed his "legal mp3 player": a radio with a cassete recorder, which allowed him to record music for free. "MP3 player, ladies and gentlemen!" :)
frankly, i don't care for "1 million songs for free": there isn't even one third of that total worth of listening to...
I don't feel like it...
Use a simple application to record the sound output of your PC sound card. Click "record" just before playback starts and click "stop" when the song ends.
WOW does that take waaaay too much effort! And after all that, you still need to fix the ends of the file and then properly tag them. And even then, you still have a 128Kbps stream serially transcoded, resulting in artifacts even my half-deaf grandmother could pick out.
Streamripping takes far less effort. Tune WinAmp to a streamed station playing the genre you want, start Streamripper, and go to work/school/bed. Eight hours later, you'll have practically the entirety of that station's high-rotation playlist, properly tagged and at a quality of up to VBR384Kbps. (I have yet to find a stream doing better quality than that, and even as something of a sound-quality-elitist, I have to admit that comes as close to CD quality as I can tell in any listening environment I can afford).
Or better yet - Just borrow the CD from a friend and rip it yourself.
Or best of all, BUY THE CD (preferably directly from the artist)! I have no qualms about downloading to check out a band, but if I like them, why wouldn't I want to give something back?
Ya! All those millionaire soldiers need to step off!
Simply put emusic.com provides VBR mp3 without DRM, and has a catalogue of over million tracks. Will suit linux perfectly.
It is 70 years, but those are decimal years. After decimal to binary marketing math and partitioning and formatting of your time it turns out to only be 57 *binary* years.
Here goes the normal slashdot response, every time a company does something right. the Napster model is very good, for 9.99/month you get unlimited access to songs on computer for 15/month unlimited on computer and napster compatible player. now they are even letting you listen to songs for free 5 times. This is the sweetest legal deal there is around and it's why I am a napster subscriber. The truth is nothing will make the pirates happy unless it's completely free, and unrestricted but news flash music is a business and people are trying to earn livings off of it. I think napster is doing extremely well in this RIAA controlled mess we call the music industry. There service is fairly priced and allows access to millions of songs with reasonable limits.
Or maybe it shouldn't have been a story at all.
Actually I think it's just great! It's essentially a form of radio-on-demand, supported by ads.
It solves a problem I had despaired of solving -- when I (or my girlfriend and I) get nostalgic and want to hear some long-forgotten song again, which maybe I don't have in my library, I can now head over to Napster.com, download it and listen at radio-quality a couple of times, and feel good.
If I really like it I can buy it, but sometimes I just wanted to hear it again. Or settle a bet. Or remind someone that a song exists.
Or just dance to it with my favorite girl and toss it.
For the record, I was able to hit their site (FireFox on Fedora), register with a throwaway email address (as always), and navigate to their free music and play it, without a hitch. I havent figured out exactly how they are doing it, but it seems to be using flash. Someone else mention extracting the (apparently very low quality) music from the flash file, and one could always use a capture-to-file sound driver as well. Presumably they know this, and presumably whoever owns the (C) on the music has signed off on it. Wether the songs will be scraped from the free plays and redistributed remains to be seen.
Well I just put in 5 different groups that I wanted to listen to and they don't even have them. Also, they seem to be overloaded at the moment.
Is a label-owned network beginning to get it? All they need to do next is:
1. Make it cross-platform (I run Linux - presumably it requires Windows Media Player or their own player thanks to DRM?)
2. Make the purchased tracks unencumbered by DRM (see #1)
3. Offer a lossless-compression option
But this is a first step - they're finally beginning to grasp the concept that the "try before you buy" model actually works with music. That's what many folks used the original Napster for - to randomly search for and download music, listen to a bit of a bunch of tracks, delete the crap and then go to amazon.com or somewhere else and actually order the CD. I discovered a LOT of great music that way, music I'd never have discovered otherwise. I'd never have guessed I like Jazz as much as I do if it weren't for the original Napster network.
However, considering that the tracks are (presumably) DRM-encumbered and lossy, even if I were to set up a Windows box (or finagle with wine) to use the new Napster, I'd still go elsewhere to buy the CD, and get some nice artwork with the CD to boot.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
You've just given a better indictment of the music industry than any **AA-hater I've seen.
When the studio can pluck any of a dozen bands from the pool of unsigned acts in any city and make an album that's every bit as good as what they've chosen to release, they're wasting my time -- and their efforts.
Record labels should be identifying talent, not just polishing turds. Since they're not doing their jobs, they don't deserve to be paid. Get out of the way and let me pay for artistic TALENT, not business acumen and "packaging".
-- If you're posting to be funny, and your sig is funnier . . . .
That gives you 5 shots at trying to figure out how to record it for yourself.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Well, they just lost 1 customer. I won't be going back.
check out http://www.magnatune.com/ -- free mp3 music (you pay what you think it's worth) or you can purchase a CD. also interesting is you can download the raw unmixed tracks for some (all?) of the music and remix it yourself, if that's your thing.
I use sndrec32 and grab whatever I want
Last time I checked, sndrec32 had a limit of 60 seconds of recording time and little control over the volume of the output. I suggest Audacity to overcome these limitations.