“If Reuters is to be believed, Napster is spending US$30 million to promote their music rental service, starting with a Super Bowl spot. According to the article, Napster compares their $15/month fee with spending $10,000 to download 10,000 individual tracks from the iTunes Music Store,” Dan Knight writes for Low End Mac. “As if!”
Knight writes, “I don’t know what universe Napster is living in or how gullible they think the music-loving public is, but I can’t imagine how the won’t end up with egg on their face for this one. Ten thousand dollars! Ten thousand tracks? Sure, you could store 10,000 tracks on an iPod – but who would? And of those who would, how many don’t already own most of that material on CD?
“Apple has sold about 250 million tunes and 10 million iPods. Assuming everyone who owns an iPod is buying from iTMS (which probably is not the case) and that only iPod owners are using iTunes to purchase tracks from iTMS (which I know is not the case), we’re looking at Apple selling about 25 tracks per iPod. So how does Napster come up with their number? Simple, it’s the number of tunes you can store on a 40 GB iPod. And then the further assumption that you don’t have any of those 10,000 tracks on CD, so you’ll spend $10,000 to fill your iPod,” Knight writes. “If Apple knew how to do that, they could give away computers.”
Full article here.
I’d gladly spend ten large to fill my iPod. Hell, I just spent fifty G to get my teeth capped with a platinum veneer, and my mink fur sink set me back about twenty K.
the shame, the founder of napster has got to be bowling over in pain.
a good portion of the american public are ignorant TV zombies, believing everything they see….napster knows that
and they know that this shit they shovel will be believed by some….sorry way to sell a product (or use of a product till you stop paying the subscription fee lol)
Ultimately, the problem with Napster’s business model is that they’re putting the cart before the horse.
Apple does things the right way: they put together the best (and best-selling) player out there, then they require you to use iTunes in order to load it with music. And while you’re at it, you can buy music from the iTMS, if you’re so inclined.
On the other hand, Napster seems to think that consumers want to buy songs to listen to them… on their computer? on a player that the user doesn’t have? WTF?
Let the Lemmings follow Micro$oft lead on this too! They will end at the bottom of the nearest cliff.
Music lovers are not stupid. They will soon find out that the subscription model will break there bank, after all Micro$oft only wants their money.
And for those with fewer brain cells than an amoeba: You could fill your music/mp3 hard drive player with all the subscription based music you want. But guess whats going to happen to it as soon as you stop making those payments?! Poof it’s magically useless space fodder!! That music will never be your’s unless you purchase it. Where’s the advantage of paying monthly installments, just to end up paying again to buy it?
Bling Bling Baby
Well my family has easily spent a couple hundred over the last 2 years.
Brought to you by the magic word MORE, as in we have spent more in the ITMS in the last 2 years, than we have spent in brick and mortar stores in the last decade…
Now I have to find the time to digitize my wife and my vast album collection.
Janus = joke+anus
I believe M$ is trying to copy Apple with their naming schemes, and that the correct spelling is … jAnus
Napster is circling the (super) bowl
joe
Thank you ‘maczac’ for showing that, in its ambiguity, poor grammar can yield hilarious results.
Whoah Maczac!
“Now I have to find the time to digitize my wife and my vast album collection.”
When you get that wife digitizing thing figured out send me an email okay?
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IT’s so predictable.. Napster keeps touting their 1999 Brand Power.. which was when they were the leading music theft brand…
Why?
Because that’s what Shawn Fanning sold to (Bertelssman?).. The rights to the Brand.
Basically that’s ALL that’s left of Napster, the logo and name.. so that’s why they think it’s the only aspect of their company that has ever been successful at anything (and certainly never made any money)…
Kinda funny when you think the most successful part of the company was coined by a few stoners teasing their friend…
This tells me Napster is run by morons!
Isn’t it simply amazing to think about the fact that — just a few years back — Jobs admitted that Apple had missed the boat with the whole craze about burning of CD’s because they were including DVD units on every computer? Instead of CD burners!? So they quickly did an about-face and started including burners. Remember?
And now just a little while later, relatively speaking, here we are and Apple OWNS music on the computer! Talk about a brilliant recovery and quick turnaround.
Amazing.
I still hear people asking all the time if an iPod will only play songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store. I still can’t understand how people don’t realize that you can also rip your own CD collection as well as play standard .mp3 files on one as well. Apple could stand to educate the ignorant masses a bit when it comes to this.
someone should tell Napster that 10,000 songs doesn’t add up to $10,000 — it adds up to $9,900..either way this guy @ Napster is a big dildo.
Lots of things to think about here regarding Napster vs. iTunes.
1 – Napster isn’t run by morons. They’re business people taking a chance that they can make a mark in the online download industry. Things haven’t gone well, despite all the money they’re spending. That happens to every business (can you say “Cube?”)
2 – Apple’s “about face” going from DVD players to CD burners isn’t a good analogy when compared to iPod/iTunes/iTMS. The relationship is nominal. I doubt that most Mac iPod/iTunes/iTMS users burn CDs. “Most” usually refers to more than half.
3 – Napster sounds desperate, both in PR material and licensing, but time will tell. If they have enough time…
4 – Lease/rent vs. own. Jobs is probably right. Most (50% or more) would prefer to own their songs and be able to carry them wherever they want. That being the case, for some (less than 50%) the all-you-can-eat rental model might be a good deal. Still, $15 a month forever…
5 – Competition #1. Napster, Microsoft, Creative, et al., they’re all competition for Apple’s trio of iPod/iTunes/iTMS so Apple will hold onto the model they have as long as possible. If music rentals catch on (I think a substantial segment will) then Apple can provide that as an option in a minute.
6 – Competition #2. Apple is competition and market leader for Napster, Microsoft, Creative, et al. It will be much more difficult for them to create that same trio– Portable Music Player/PC Music Player/Online Music Store– to work in harmony the way Apple’s trio does already.
The future looks good for Apple but somewhere, at some time, Apple’s music market share will trickle downward. It must. Even Microsoft’s “monopoly” is losing steam and grip as Apple and Linux add to Redmond’s woes.
What’ll be interesting is to see if Apple can learn from Microsoft’s mistakes and continue to provide value and experience that beats the competition.
Tera Patricks
Mac360.com
If you shop smartly on iTunes, you buy albums with 20 or more tracks — so tracks in that case cost less than 50 cents each.
And you download every free song they offer.
All this brings the average cost per song down.
What is really funny about their ad is that it will run, saying you have to pay $10000 to fill up your iPod, THEN, the Pepsi promo will run, saying get music for FREE! Apple gets a great response to s stupid ad without even trying!
“Now I have to find the time to digitize my wife”
Maczac,
Not a good idea; if you get into an argument, she’ll hit you with the comment that your hard drive is too small, and it wasn’t all that hard to begin with. Not to mention the dangers of hackers accessing her without your knowledge and infecting her with some nasty virus. Or imagine having to navigate a bunch of pop-up windows just to make out with her. On the plus side, you could save yourself mucho dinero and download new clothes for her from BitTorrent.
Tera, you forget 1 important point. – Napster, Microsoft, Creative, et al. will all be competing for the same group of people (even if it is as high as 50%), leaving the other 50% or so for Apple with their current model. No need to change it, they will be the only one’s doing it. Apple is in a fantastic position.
I have 10,384 songs on my iPod. Most of them came from Napster back when… ah only kidding RIAA.
“2 – Apple’s “about face” going from DVD players to CD burners isn’t a good analogy when compared to iPod/iTunes/iTMS. The relationship is nominal. I doubt that most Mac iPod/iTunes/iTMS users burn CDs. “Most” usually refers to more than half.”
Tera, you’re reading too much into my post. It was merely an observation about a company that didn’t even seem to be THINKING about music on the computer / in digital form, and then went and became the DOMINANT player in the field. All in a tremendously short time.
I still think it’s an amazing capitalization on what was initially a gaffe. The fact that it happened in so short a time span is what makes it all the more impressive.
And with the MUSIC part of the equation locked-up, Apple can now turn to movies (remember iFlix, anyone? Also iFlicks? I’ll bet Apple owns them as we speak) — and unlike before they’ll be doing the whole MOVIE thing at just the right time.
A Janus player has to call home every so often to refresh the time stamp on the music and to report back exactly what music has been played.
I understand that Napster distribute a fixed proportion of their income to the artists and labels. The proportion of that money that each of them receive is proportional to how many times their music has been played.
That’s not to say that the artist gets say ¢3 per play, but instead, if their song accounts for 0.1% of all plays, they get 0.1% of the money that’s shared between artists.
The important issue is just what proportion of the money Napster keep for themselves. Apple retain about 20% and out of that they cover their costs and make a very tiny profit.
Apple have been fairly open about the proportion of money going to the music makers, are Napster saying anything ?
Viridian,
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