“On the surface, the To Go model looks like a great replacement for Napster’s previous subscription service. In the past, customers had to pay a monthly subscription fee that allowed them to rent as much music as they liked. Users then had to pay extra to download permanent versions of songs that could be transferred to a device or CD. Now, $14.95 per month lets you download as much music as you like to your computer and/or device,” Ashlee Vance writes for The Register. “The big detractor, however, is that you still don’t own the music. You rent it. Stop paying the Napster tax man, and all your music disappears.”
“This forces you to make a choice between quantity and permanence. Pay Napster every month and gain access to an almost limitless supply of music or buy select CDs, as you have in the past, and own them for years,” Vance writes. “From where we sit, the math doesn’t break down terribly well in Napster’s favor.”
Vance looks at a number of hypothetical customers and finds Napster To Go doesn’t really work very well for any situation.
Vance continues, “Even Napster seems to realize the vacuous nature of the deal. ‘A fully-integrated marketing program will support the release of Napster To Go, led by a currently-under-wraps February 6, 2005 Super Bowl television advertisement,’ it says in a press release. ‘This will be complemented by the new ‘Works with Napster To Go’ logo program that enables consumers to easily identify Napster To Go compatible MP3 players at retail.'”
“What is this marketing program integrated into? Is it possible to have a partially-integrated marketing program? Are we to be excited by logos now? When the bullshit generator goes this far into overdrive, you know there are problems,” Vance writes. “Napster plans to spend $30m to promote this new service. That’s a cute total if you consider that Apple made close to $14m a day last quarter in iPod sales, shipping 4.6m devices. The only money to be had in this market is in the hardware, and Apple has it all locked up. Here’s hoping consumers will see the light and Napster To Go will go away.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ditto.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Napster CEO: We’re ‘the biggest brand in digital music, much more exciting than Apple’s iTunes’ – February 03, 2005
Napster tries to push music subscription service over pay-for-download iTunes-like model – February 03, 2005
Apple Computer could sell 21 million iPod shuffle units in 2005 – January 19, 2005
Cornell University’s Mac users ‘uniformly unhappy’ with Napster – January 19, 2005
Analyst: Apple’s iTunes Music Store ‘downloads could reach 474 million in calendar 2005’ – December 17, 2004
Study: Apple iTunes Music Store dominates with 70 percent market share, second place Napster holds 11 percent – October 19, 2004
Cornell University wrestles with Napster’s exclusion of Mac and iPod-using students – September 08, 2004
Why are Cornell’s Mac students being forced to pay for useless Napster? – September 07, 2004
Napster schools to Mac-using students: bend over and take it – September 04, 2004
Napster CEO: ‘it would be great’ if Apple iPod supported WMA – March 09, 2004
Napster CEO: Apple iTunes, iPod ‘consumer-unfriendly experiences’ – March 09, 2004
Microsoft tries to push WMA by propping up beleaguered Napster – February 25, 2004
the MAWPUP might be a pain, but all the sites it goes to are good for you.
Learn more, help people. Don’t just sit there at the damn computer all day.
How about:
Social Education Pop Up Pages
SEPOP
ps I think the MDN magic word dbase is weighted towards social rebellion, and subversive.
Let me recap:
I’m going with “Napster to go” for one month for $15.
I’ll buy a small hard disk drive (say 80 GB) for $75.
I’ll buy 1000 blank CD’s for $160.
I download my favourite 17.000 Songs, invite friends to a “burning”-party and burn my songs to discs.
Spend $250 once, and you’ll legally obtain enough music to fill all your future iPods.
I was stupid, wasn’t I?
Of course Napster is charging extra, if I want to burn my music on disc.
Original Napster was stealing from the record companies…
New Napster steals from its customers…
Ironic…
Ought to be $1 per month after one year. 50c after 2 years and 25c thereafter. Even then it would still be a pain.
Would someone be kind enough to explain WTF the MAWPUP problem IS??? Is it some kind of pop-up window you people are seeing? (I for one don’t see any popups… Safari with popup blocking ON)
Buffy, the problem with internet radio is you can’t choose what you want to listen to. For example, you hear an artist that sounds interesting and you want to hear another song by them what are you going to do? You have to go buy a crappy download from someone. No thanks.
$10 per month for satellite radio where you can only pick the genre or $15 per month where you can pick and choose what ever you want to check out and explore in any way you want to. With either service, you don’t own the music (of course, Audio Hijack could fix that). The price doesn’t seem that far off for the difference in how you can choose the music.
I’m still hoping Napster is successful with this so Apple has to follow!
I will add that I think it would be stupid for people to use this service to “create” their music collection for all the reasons mentioned above. And of course, that this very thing is what Napster is promoting. I’m promoting it as a means of finding and discovering music that I like enough to go out and buy the CD.
iTunes isn’t getting my money now. With a service like Napster’s they would.
Well, I think it is not that dramatic : Use something like WireTap to re-record the sound part you like. Put the recorded piece back in iTunes and burn a CD.
“Napster to Go,” Bullshit Generator. Any similarities here?
I like Junp’s take – I think all downloaded music sounds horrible (at least if you want to play it on a decent stereo). A subscription would allow you to explore different venues while still staying legal. I’d still want a downloaded format that retains the original quality of the CD before spending my money, though.
This story is right on the money! Napster to go away should be there marketing program. I don’t want to rent my music.
YOu want to pay someone to ALLOW you to explore music? If thats all your doing and are planning to buy, Hell, download a low quality version of a couple of song, or find a friend who listens to it. I wont pay the car dealer to take a test drive. Its THEIR JOB to try to get me as a customer. I think that song previews should be a whole minute, so you can get a real feel for the music, not just a cool riff
I think this is an OK deal to AUGMENT, not REPLACE iTunes / conventional CD sales. I currently pay monthly for XM Radio, Cable, and DVR service. In other words, paying for entertainment services by monthly subscription is very common. I would like Napster better if it was $9.95 and if they gave me a fat rebate on a player for a 1-year contract (a la cell phone companies).
But would I stop buying CDs? Definitely not. Would I shelf my iPod? Of course not.
Why not just subscribe for one month, download all of the music you want to try out, and re-record all of the music you want to keep to aif or wav or even to minidisc? If you then encode the music at a high bitrate, it should sound just as good as the original wma files. Sure that can be done with current P2P systems. But Napster can make it a hell of a lot easier. I could download thousands of tracks to my PC, play and record the good ones to my Mac. Sure it takes a little more effort–but not nearly as much as finding songs using P2P services.
Not that I plan to do this, but I don’t mind pointing out a scheme which will use Napster’s dumb ideas against itself.
This along the lines of my previous suggestion that the students at Florida State just share their iTunes libraries with each other for the ultimate, free streaming service.
The attack on music consumers really needs to end. And Napster’s half-baked crappy ideas aren’t going to get us there.
repost of something i wrote in the other napster thread:
this might work for the first few months. new user signs up and spends tons of time tracking down music he likes and looking up new stuff. fills up his mp3 players. then after a while, he’s already downloaded everything he wanted. he looks at his bill and thinks to himself “why am i paying $15 a month when i haven’t even downladed anything new in so long?” then he gets pissed that he’s paying so much just to LISTEN to his music.
someone said above that this will appeal to wal-mart consumers. i completely disagree. the typical wal-mart music listener listens to pre-packaged over-commercialized top 40 songs. those are the people this would be LEAST useful for. they can fill up their 40 gig players will all the latest eminem and hillary duff in less than a month.
the people it MIGHT appeal to are those who are always looking for something new and something different. unfortunately, these are also the people who feel the most strongly about owning their music.
if this were positioned as an “unlimited preview” service, then i can see a market for it. but napster is trying to position this as the alternative to itms and it’s going to fail miserably in that category.
Sorry Buffy, the car analogy is a poor one. To me anyway, a car is a product, music is an artform. Would I pay to go into an art gallery to preview the different pieces prior to making a purchase? Yes I would. Not only am I supporting the art (and the ability of the artist to continue to create the art financially) I am also getting a chance to get a good look at the art piece rather than a 30 second shot on the computer.
We’re obviously looking at this from very different angles. For me, one of the great experiences is finding a new musical artist that just blows me away. They are hard to find and I’ve wasted a lot of money on a lot of CD’s trying to find them. A music service similar to Napsters would not only allow me to find many more of those unique artists but would save me money as well as space in my CD storage bin.
Napster cost $15 a month only if you want to load it on a portable device. For $10 you can download, or stream, whatever you want on your home PC. For $0 a month you can listen to samples and buy 99 cent downloads just as with iTunes. So they are offering the same service as iTunes, plus additional functions for people that like to listen to more music. What is wrong with that? Why can’t iTunes offer a similar service for those of us that want it?. If you are happy listening to clips, then Napster is the same deal as iTunes. That Napster subscription is good for 3 machines so you could split it with 2 friends; $3.33 each for unlimited listening.
It is similar to XM radio except you get to choose the artist. I have no interest in buying a download; if I like the band, I will go to Amazon or ebay and buy a used CD. That’s just what works for me. It saves a lot of money on CDs I listen to once and lets me broaden my horizons. Don’t want to be listening to Crosby Stills ans Nash in the old folks home.
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