Napster On the Block

Ars Technica has a good wrap of Napster hanging out a "For Sale or Partner" sign. With half a million subscribers (down from the previous quarter) and $100M in annual revenue, the company is still bleeding cash. El Reg pinpoints the trouble: "The subscription crowd – and Apple via iTunes – must fight over a few pennies per song in profit. More from the Vulture: "You have to wonder if Napster's customer base is really worth the effort for a company such as Microsoft or even Real. The Napster brand has all the gravitas of a Che Guevara t-shirt."

Comments

Metallica?

[corroncho]

Maybe Metallica would be interested in this fine venture!!!!
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Free iPods? Its legit. 5 of my friends got theirs. Get yours here!

Napster brand associations

[EVil Lawyer]

At one point the Napster brand might have had all the gravitas of a Che Guevara shirt. At this point it has all the gravitas of a Jar Jar Binks shirt.

Re:Napster brand associations

[DurendalMac]

Maybe the Che Guevera reference was to show that only idiots who don't know what they're talking about use it, much like the twats who wear Che Guevera shirts?

Is this a surprise

[gbulmash]

Way back when the Napster brand was bought for a buttload of cash, I said it was a bad buy. The buyers thought the brand strength and name recognition would turn into cash when they rolled out a for-pay music service. But the people who used Napster to share music had moved on to Kazaa, Morpheus, and new ones when those got nailed or started barfing up spyware.

When Napster was finally re-rolled out as a subscription service, all of its fans had moved on. There was some advantage to the name recognition, but overall it had lost its chic, its cool, and its cred. It was now a bunch of suits wearing the hip little cat head and everyone knew it. The users who "made" Napster were either illegally sharing via different apps, were buying off iTunes, or were going to hold the new Napster service up to pinpoint scrutiny like an ant under a magnifying glass.

The term "irrational exhuberance" comes to mind. The people who bought the brand and built the new service got a lot of things, but didn't get *it*. Branding the service with the Napster name, while creating a certain amount of buzzz, also brought with it a certain amount of baggage, sets of varying expectations that would be hard to meet. And their declining numbers and murmurs of selling the business just go to prove that this was a bad idea that was not well-executed.

Greg

Re:Is this a surprise

[tompaulco]

I have to agree with you. My stepson begged me to let him get a trial subscription to Napster. My first thought was "Hey, aren't they the guys who got in trouble for sharing music illegally. No way I am going to pay money for pirated songs." But some of my friends told me that they are strictly legit now. So I told my stepson he could sign up. Next thing you know, they are wanting a credit card...for a FREE trial subscription. Reading the fine print, it appears that they are going to charge me a full month, and then refund it if I don't like the service. Well, that doesn't sound like a legitimate business to me, and I wouldn't do business with them. But my stepson said he would pay for it, so I went ahead and paid the $20 or whatever it is for a FREE account.
Then, he couldn't get the software to load. Turns out you have to be an administrator to load their software. What kind of crap is that? Is it an OS or something? So I had to install the software for him because there is no way I am making him an administrator.
Next, he couldn't get the software to work. I found it worked fine on accounts with administrator priveleges, but not on ones that are regular users. This was the final straw, as there was no way I was going to give my stepson administrator priveleges.
So I cancelled the account. I cited the fact that my stepson was unable to determine if their service was any good, because their software was not compatible with the Microsoft security environment.
Then, they pissed me off by charging me $1.94 because I used the service for 3 days. In fact, in those three days we downloaded exactly zero songs, and only even got connected once or twice, while testing with an administrator account. They claim to have a 15 day or so free trial, but they actually charge you a prorated amount during that period, even though you can't use their software if you set up your security properly.
I even got American Express after them to try to get the charges reversed, but Amex sided with them. If you get a free subscription, you should have to pay for it, even if you can't use it.
DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THESE SCAMMERS!!!

Finally!

[RumGunner]

I'm glad someone is finally sticking it to that sell-out Che Guevara. His marketing campaign drives me nuts.

Now they know...

[stonedonkey]

...what it's like to be on the artist's end of the contract.

Re:Now they know...

[merreborn]

Now they know...what it's like to be on the artist's end of the contract.

That's the problem. Both the artist *and* the retailer get shafted (see: the recent collapse of Tower Records). The only people making money on this whole game are the labels.

In fact, Weird Al recently pointed out that he, personally gets *less* from an iTunes sale than he does from a CD sale, thanks to his contract's "New Technology" clause. So even though the label's costs are *lower* for iTunes sales, they're making more, and *taking* more from the artist.

The middlemen get everything. The retailers and the artists get nothing.