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Napster Going Back to Free Downloads

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the download-like-its-1999 dept.

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.'"

13 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. Awesome by pHatidic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Is that a backfire I hear? by cyngus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Is that a backfire I hear? by Golias · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Why do so many people have this fetish for giving all the money from music recording sales to the musicians?

      In most cases, the performer did the least work of anybody involved in the making of the record.

      I mean, sure, if you are Leo Kottke, you spent decades slavishly honing your craft, but that's not who I'm talking about. People like that are the exception, not the rule. (Also, Leo Kottke, while making a good living on his guitar, never has and never will make "pop star" money.)

      Metallica and Jessica Simpson are 100% utterly replaceable cogs in a much, much bigger machine. The typical recording engineer works a hell of a lot harder than Lars Ulrich ever did in his life, as does every last member of the road crew, the promoters, the distributers, etc.

      With an army of people involved in making some new band's album go gold, why should the half-drunken fucknut or fake-lesbian E-addicted bimbo pair who stumbled in to the studio to belch out tunes for a few hours become a multi-millionaire when nobody else involved in the project does so? Especially when the studio could 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?

      Pop acts get "screwed" by their contracts because before they were famous, they signed a shitty contract which was the very best one they could get from anybody... But the only reason they became famous (and began to perceive themselves as worth more money) is because the record labels MADE them famous. They worked their asses off bribing DJ's and scrounging for airplay on iPod and Volkswagon commercials to get people hooked on the music.

      The label took nearly all the risk (the majority of acts cost them money), and did nearly all the work. It's only fair that they also get most of the money, no matter how much the poor unfortunate souls who got paid to sing songs and look pretty might think they are worth.

      --

      Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

    2. Re:Is that a backfire I hear? by Nazo-San · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Whilst I agree that the others in the process do deserve every penny they have worked to earn, I still disagree that they need to line their pockets with silver and even gold every time Britney Spears releases a new even worse album. Or do you really believe it costs them with all their quality equipment and experience so incredibly much to make those things? The equipment is a fixed cost and it actually decreases many of the other costs so that it actually doesn't cost them very much in the long run to produce some new crappy album for a crappy artist that has the public spotlight for a day or two.

      Actually, the concept of supporting the bands themselves is a bit more complex than you think. Right now, what is there to convince Britney Spears that she should spend more time working on music quality than she spends with the scissors on her clothes? She's going to be paid more for the scissors in the end, so who cares about quality? On the other hand, when the creators of the music itself get paid directly, they have a LOT more incentive to actually produce quality (namely the fact that they'll go out of business if they just keep releasing crap.) It's the way capitalism is supposed to actually work in fact. In such a system, the good bands who produce quality music would, in theory, come out on top while people like Britney Spears will be back on the streets (and wishing she'd never seen those scissors when winter comes.) Ok, truth is capitalism mainly because of the government doesn't really work out as well as that, but, it definitely works out better when the market is done correctly versus when all the money and control goes to a few big groups.

      Well, besides the whole capitalism aspect in the long run, in the short run, the sort of bands who actually do the direct to consumer methods today tend to be the sort who actually try to provide people with what they want (sometimes even *shivers* TALKING to their fans) and they actually try to produce quality music because they want to, not because they want to be rich. I'm sure there are exceptions, but, today that's where it stands just because that's the kind of mentality that gravitates towards this system at the moment.

  3. Re:It's not unlimited by crazyjeremy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yeah that's great and all, but you can listen to most all 2 million songs 5 times. Why not get this AND itunes and get the best of both worlds. Listen to an entire song if you want then buy it from whichever you want!

    --
    Funnypics
  4. works for me... by lawngnome · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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...

  5. Re:Or use Pandora by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It's pretty good at picking decent music. I was gonna make a joke about how it must pick tunes based on "this is more like noise, not really music" and "some guy growls along with loud guitars", but it actually told me something along those lines: "an aggressive male vocalist and an unintelligible vocal delivery" (and yes, I actually liked the tune). I'm shocked.

  6. Good Move by cheese-cube · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.

  7. Re:It works great! by markdavis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Good for you. I tried it under Linux + Firefox 1.5 + Flash and it is broken. How not interesting.

    I Emailed them, but I expect:

    1) No reply or
    2) Some nonsense canned reply that doesn't answer my question or
    3) "Must use MS-Windows" or something like that reply

    When I click on Play for a song, it pops up the Napster Free Player and never loads the song- the controls are there and act like they work (I can slide the volume control, click on play and it depresses/turns blue, etc), but there is no sound, no video, no ads. I suppose it is using flash, but I have no problems with flash on any other sites.

  8. just want to pay for single UN-DRM'd music titles. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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?

  9. Pay service by theundergroundman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

  10. AllofMp3.com by Kadin2048 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Because the RIAA can't figure out how to touch them?

    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.
    In the United States, many supporters of AllOfMP3 have pointed to limited exceptions in US copyright law, most notably 17 U.S.C. 602(a)(2), which provides a personal use exception to the rule that importation of copyrighted items constitutes infringement. A corresponding exception does not exist in 602(b), however, which governs whether importation is prohibited. Under 603, where importation is prohibited, the federal government may seize or forfeit prohibited items "in the same manner as property imported in violation of the customs revenue laws." Thus, it appears possible that "importing" digital files from AllOfMP3.com does not constitute copyright infringement but does constitute a violation of customs law. There is no private right of action for violations of customs law, as there is for copyright law.

    Whether downloading can be construed as importation is open to question. Importation is defined as a form of distribution of copies and phonorecords (17 U.S.C. 602(a)), which are defined as tangible objects (17 U.S.C. 101), which of course can no more be downloaded than a brick can be. So far, US Courts have not ruled definitively on the issue of whether unpaid downloading can constitute infringement on the part of the downloader. Moreover, there have been no rulings in U.S. courts to date regarding the specific legality of purchasing music from AllofMP3.com.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allofmp3#Legality_in_ the_US
    --
    "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
  11. Sndrec32 limitations by tepples · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.