Online music: a ‘nine-inning slugfest’
p2pnet.net News:- Napster’s new boss Brad Duea thinks online music is, “a battle that will take place over many months, many quarters, and many years. And it’s one that we’re very excited about.”
Quoted in a Tech Live story here, Duea says he thinks music fans are “getting it”, and that Napster is in the “first inning” [sic] of a nine-innings slugfest with other online music services, including Apple’s dominant iTunes Music Store.
Actually, it’s Duea who doesn’t get it.
He doesn’t appear to understand that very few people who get their music online are likely to want to use Napster II to download the music industry’s paltry catalogues of tired tunes – now or in the future.
In fact, were it not for massive support from the Big Five record labels which elbowed the remains of Fanning’s brainchild into university campuses across America, its performance would be even less impressive than it is.
“Competition is healthy. And we think we’ll ultimately win by offering choice to consumers and listening to the consumers,” says Duea.
He doesn’t explain how X number of corporate online music stores offering trivial numbers of the same cookie-cutter songs at prices that range within a few cents of each other can possibly be called ‘competition’.
