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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.
"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.
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
That's the thing: you can't download the song. You can only stream it. Kind of a worthless service, if you ask me. Well, until someone figures out an easy way to save the stream.
'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."
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.
I'm not advocating piracy here, but if one wished to download the songs, one could play them in Winamp with the free Streamripper plugin and rip the streams as MP3s. But that would be wrong, so don't do it. Ever.
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.
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
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!"
I'll be satisfied with a year of good music. My guess is there's not enough.
Favorite quote: "
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!
If you want to illegally copy music, I'm sure there are easier ways which results in higher quality recordings. Or does it just make yer feel all manly being able to get round napsters "new thing"?
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
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?
>Look, it's not exactly rocket surgery:
Are you saying you don't have to be a brain scientist to figure this out?
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 =\
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...
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
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.