Napster’s latest effort
p2p news / p2pnet: You have it give it to the people who run the disinterred Napster. They don’t give up.
Members of the Big Four Organized Music cartel killed the original Napster, the p2p application that started it all, did a Frankenstein, Roxio bought it, re-named itself Napster, and the Big Four then shoe-horned it into a number of senior US schools.
It’s also received all kinds of mainstream media hype but notwithstanding, it’s consistently failed to make any kind of impression on the people who get their music fixes from the Net.
Now, “In a bid to gain traction against Apple’s dominant iTunes online music store, Napster over the weekend shifted to an advertising-supported model,” says USA Today.
Visitors can listen to tunes, “But there is a catch,” says the story. “You can only listen to a song five times. After that, you have to either buy it for 99 cents or sign up for a monthly subscription.”
Oh.
Meanwhile, Napster says its fourth quarter net loss will be lower than originally projected
Also See:
USA Today – Napster’s back to basics: Free tunes, May 1, 2006
May 2nd, 2006 at 9:54 am
Go Napster
May 2nd, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Whenever I see the ‘new’ Napster I can’t help but imagine a good friend who was a bit of a rogue and got on the nerves of some people but was generally liked suddenly disappearing for a while, then suddenly coming back to town… yet there’s something different about him, he’s just no fun anymore, he’s all corporate and just generally not worth hanging out with.
Quite what anyone involved with the ‘new’ Napster was thinking when they had the bright idea of ‘continuing the brand’ I don’t know.
May 2nd, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Have you actually taken a listen to it yet. The audio quality is lousy!
Here’s a review… http://www.chench.com/emusic/2006/05/01/napster-is-free-napster-is-free/
May 2nd, 2006 at 6:38 pm
Stop drinking the iTunes Kool-Aid, there’s more ways to discover music out there than the monopolistic Apple.
May 2nd, 2006 at 7:51 pm
100% agree!
May 2nd, 2006 at 7:54 pm
They are full lenght PREVIEWS. You decide if you want to buy a higher quality song or subscribe to higher qualoty “rentals”
It’s a FREE PREVIEW. Of course it’s LOW quality.
On that note, why doesn’t Apple have full song previews instead of 30 second clips???
May 2nd, 2006 at 9:20 pm
“the bright idea of ‘continuing the brand’” = “Clueless” Corporate magnates attempting to fool people into buying “product”. “Download your fav tunes from Napster now!!”? I don’t think so; the “real” Napster died a LONG time ago (just as the last real release of Netscape was v4.8[0]).
May 3rd, 2006 at 2:32 am
there is always fine print – the full length samples are only available if you’re in the USA – everyone else still gets just 30 second samples – its not like the internet is a global phenomenon, and fairly typical that an American company considers there to be nothing beyond its borders
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
May 3rd, 2006 at 4:16 am
rhaspody is also usa only. it’s licensing issue’s which take time. if they could roll it out globally i’m sure they would
May 3rd, 2006 at 4:51 am
they’re right: it’s not up to Napster. It is the record companies calling the shots.
May 3rd, 2006 at 5:01 am
Why on earth would you even care? Napster is already dead. The RIAA’s “Crapster” will die soon enough anyway becuase it is shit. If you’re “scared” of p2p and interested in just sampling the Corporate BS, log in to Yahoo! Launch and you can sample all their crap as full length videos at no cost. Watching, rather than just listening, is a much better way to determine if you like something or not. But being smart, and knowing how to minimize the risks with p2p is still the best way to go;)
May 3rd, 2006 at 6:03 pm
Here is an ad ideas for Napster.
Split the song files and insert ads within the song.
Here is my logic:
– Noboby listens to or read ads anymore. They are passe… too discreted a means to fool the people.
– For some of the music the ads will sound better than the songs.
– Some computer savvy kids will remove the ads, but in the preocess they will have to listen to the ads.
An even better idea is to forget the ad idea. At some time some offesive ad will sandwich a song and the songwriter will sue for a moral rights violaton. Imagine if a song named “I pray to thee Lord” sanwiched between ads that promote gambling, or whiskey? Or how about a song named “I love p2p” or “Save the kids” sandwiched by RIAA ads? That would really be offensive.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
May 3rd, 2006 at 6:13 pm
“the full length samples are only available if you’re in the USA”
There is a simple reason for this.
The music publishing business has a scam to slice up royalties when shipping the royalyies from one country to another. They want royalties sales in, say Italy, to pass through an Italian publisher first. Therefor no one can distribute songs from the USA to Europe. They need two middlemen, one in the USA and one in Italy so that the publisher cut is taken twice.
A scam if I ever saw one.
Surprising that songwriters keep quiet about this scam.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
May 4th, 2006 at 4:13 am
They have to negotiate deals in the other countries to make it free
They say they are working on that now
May 4th, 2006 at 4:21 am
For 9.99 a month and the price of a Linksys to play the downloads on my stereo I think its a great deal
I must have downloaded 20 albums on Saturday
Im done buying music now, subscriptions are the wave of the future
May 4th, 2006 at 6:23 am
Well… I guess there truly is one born every minute. It would be priceless to see the look on your face when Crapster finally does go under and you have nothing to show for all your money spent. I’d flush my money down a toilet before I gave the industry any money is such a ridiculous way.
May 6th, 2006 at 4:20 am
I would rather listen to music than watch music video’s.
May 6th, 2006 at 9:15 am
Who says you have to watch? You can listen just the same. Besides, the comment was in referrence to sampling music, not music enjoyment in general.