Napster? Forget it, say students
p2pnet.net News:- Napster was shoe-horned into the US academic system by the Big Music cartel to move ‘product’ in universities under the pretext of saving students from lawsuits - lodged by the cartel.
But it doesn’t seem to have done the labels or Napster much good.
Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Students refuse to buy a single song from Napster
By Ashlee Vance - The Register
Napster has put a new twist on the notion of being a loss leader. It has actually managed to sell more songs for rival online music services than for its own product, according to a survey conducted by a university customer.
Not a single University of Rochester student admitted to buying a song via Napster during the Fall 2004 semester. Instead, eight per cent of the students turned to the likes of iTunes and Musicmatch to buy songs they enjoy. That’s an ominous sign for a company spending millions to seed the university market with music in the hopes of unseating Apple as the clear leader in online music.
Most troubling for Napster, things don’t appear to be improving on the music purchase front. During the Spring 2004 semester, a whopping 1 per cent of students did buy tracks off the Nap. Now no one does.
The situation worsens with Napster’s small number of specialty "buy only" songs not included with its standard service. Two per cent of students purchased such tracks from Napster, while 39 per cent turned to rival services to secure their songs.
The University of Rochester has boasted about being one of the Napsterized schools that force music rental services on students in the hopes of curbing P2P file-trading. In almost every case, Napster offers such schools a massive discount off its $9.95 per month fee, making it easier for the schools to stomach the cost of opening music shops. The schools also typically receive hardware donations from unnamed sponsors.
Napster has spent tens of millions on a massive marketing campaign, attacking the "$10,000" cost it takes to fill an iPod. (This is a meaningless statistic when you consider that iPod owners are free to add their existing CD collections and those of friends to their device at no cost.) In addition, Napster has subsidized device makers, attempting to create interest in the non-iPod music player market. This strategy left Napster reporting a $24m fourth quarter loss.
A host of companies, most notably Napster and Real, appear convinced that consumers will buy into the concept of renting their music. This strategy requires a massive cultural change in which people must accept restrictions on when and how they can listen to music that is of lower quality than a CD. If you pay a monthly fee forever, you receive all the music one could desire. A decent idea until you realize that most people nurture their music collections to reflect their tastes and don’t want access to all the blather ever created.
For the rental model to succeed, Napster and others would, er, have to turn a profit at some point. The companies appear to believe that a critical mass of consumers would deliver black ink.
But in today’s reality, hardware makers - mostly Apple - are the ones making serious cash off online music.
To Napster’s credit, University of Rochester students do embrace the streaming and tethered download aspects of the service. A healthy 47 per cent of students added a song they liked to their streaming playlist, while another 39 per cent acquired a tethered download. This helps explain why students would be reluctant to purchase a song, since they have ready access to the music at no additional charge.
Such positives fail to impress though as Apple nears 500m songs downloaded from iTunes and generates almost as much revenue in one day off the iPod as Napster makes in an entire quarter.
For Napster’s college ventures to result in long-term success, it must overwhelm the students with the quality of the service. And, in fact, the vast majority of kids at Rochester find Napster’s software very easy to use. Even so, 56 per cent of the students use other services than Napster even though they receive Napster "for free." In addition, many students complained about Napster’s Windows-only approach, its lack of selection and its DRM policies - not to mention their continued fondness for P2P applications.
Those schools that add the cost of Napster to students’ fees are grumbling about the service as well.
Middlebury College, for example, published a damaging expose in a school paper after the institution decided to re-up its Napster trial.
"While Napster refuses to let schools discuss the program’s cost with students, The Campus has learned that the SGA (student government association) allocated $10,000 this year for Napster and is predicting an annual cost of $20,000 to continue the offering Napster next year," reported Ben Salkowe, in the Middlebury Campus. "Although only 50 percent of the campus uses the Napster service, all students pay for it through the SAF (student activities fee), an annual $220 fee which all students are required to pay for funding of student organizations.
"The actual cost of providing service for every student is believed to have been just under $40,000, however an unidentified outside sponsor paid part of the costs, and not all students took advantage of the service. None of the students or administrators involved in the agreement would name the sponsor - some of the program’s extreme critics believe the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sponsors Napster college programs in their first year to encourage well-known schools to join the program."
A disconcerting aspect about many of the Napster college deals is that the schools are paying for the service now during trial periods and then saying they will bill the students an undetermined amount should they buy in for the long haul. Napster refuses to allow the schools to reveal how much they pay for the service - even at publicly funded state schools - and could theoretically raise the price well over these cut rate trials in the years to come. This means Napster could be laying the groundwork for a very expensive future - bad news for parents who must already spend up to $160,000 for top four-year schools like Middlebury.
Schools such as Penn State have equated charging students for a music shop with billing them for bus services and computer labs. Surely parents would prefer to shell out for actual learning devices than to make sure their children can receive a tethered download of the latest Britney Spears album?
Are parents pleased to see the record labels push these schools to open music stories with threats of lawsuits hanging over the kiddos’ heads? Are they aware this is going on?
[Ashlee Vance works out of both San Francisco and Chicago. He now roosts with the vulture flock, but before that, wrote for numerous publications including CNN.com, PCWorld, InfoWorld and ComputerWorld. He's also done the occasional piece for the New York Times.
He tell us that when he's not contemplating the music labels' self-imposed death spiral, he spends an unhealthy amount of time scribbling about servers, processors and other junk and for relaxation, enjoys long, calming walks through bars, and triumphant returns from hangovers.]
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July 11th, 2005 at 4:14 pm
“…appear convinced that consumers will buy into the concept of renting their music.”
Yeah, right. on what planet? serious music fans don’t rent, they own.
Even though this guy writes for the Register now what is this fasination with 500million songs in three years by Itunes? If a new group had that dismal of a showing their labels would drop them. maybe he wrote for CNN, NY times and the others too long.
Rick
July 11th, 2005 at 5:37 pm
didn’t the majority of people say “no thanks” years ago when napster sold out? the same with audio galaxy. NO THANKS!
July 11th, 2005 at 6:17 pm
Most folks can tell a pig in a blanket ain’t a beauty. No one but no one wants to rent music. Its an unending bill with only one result at the end. Sooner or later you gonna forget to send them the money, get in a pinch and not have the money, or be gone on vacation or the like and not be able to send it. At that point all the music you got from them is worthless. So is all the money you paid to keep those songs active. It all goes down the drain.
As the other commentor said, those serious about their music buy it. The DRM laden, 128 bit rate songs aren’t for serious music lovers either. If you spent the money for the stereo equipment of quality, it is readily noticed that part of the music is missing at 128 bit rate. No matter the adjustments you can make on a good stereo, you can’t adjust out the missing parts to make it better. The idea that I or anyone else wants on line music purchasing under the present overpriced, underquality offerings is a wishful dream on the part of the music industry.
Between the DRM and the propriatory formats, nothing is very compatible with the customer. The customer can’t do what he wishes with the mp3 after purchase. He can’t transfer it to another portable that doesn’t accept the same format, he can’t use it as he wishes. So why buy?
You buy because to own. The music industries present stance is you don’t own the music you buy. You are therefore wasting your money to purchase music. You aren’t even renting it as the price would reflect that. Instead you are being gouged once again by the music industry that wants to rake every possible penny from your pockets. No one wants to pay 18 bucks or so for a cd with only two good songs on it. The 9 dollar price range per song is simply too steep a price to pay and the customer has went elsewhere to find entertainment. Paying the artist is one thing, paying a conartist is something else.
July 11th, 2005 at 7:56 pm
“No one but no one wants to rent music.”
Speak for yourself. I love to rent music.
I assume you don’t go to movie theaters, you pay 8 bucks for two hours and walk away with nothing.
I would rather rent music than kill myself with high priced monetary high of drugs and booze.
I don’t wan’t to pay .99 cents for every song i want to hear just so i can own it and tire of it and forget about 2 years later anyway.
I could go on, but why bother.
July 11th, 2005 at 9:30 pm
stupid napster…
for one, the students probably just say that they pay for downloads
July 12th, 2005 at 7:13 am
It’s easier to download it for free than to even bother renting it. Ha. Ha.
July 12th, 2005 at 9:54 am
Yeah, I was up at my old university, and the students currently there were boasting of 400kbps download speeds for albums and music. It was easier to download a film than go to blockbuster to get it. Unless napster do a microsoft and ban every other rival application off students computers, their model will not succeed.
July 18th, 2005 at 9:38 pm
This is that “ONE” in One Million people.