RSSNapster Subscriber Numbers Drop
By Ed Oswald | Published August 3, 2006, 12:43 PM
Napster disclosed that it is struggling to keep paying users Wednesday, saying it lost 7 percent of its subscriber base as it promotes the free portion of its site. In a conference call, Napster CEO Chris Gorog said it expected to continue to bleed users as some opt for the no-cost option.
Also in an abrupt turnaround from comments made in late January, Gorog said Napster did not "have its head in the sand" regarding a sale of the company. Several companies are expressing interest in Napster, and executives are "carefully" considering the risks and benefits.
In January, Napster was rumored to be considering a plan to layoff much of its workforce, as well as preparing to sell the company. However, Gorog responded, calling the rumors "patently untrue."
Analysts claim that Napster's lack of a solid business plan a big issue, and said a sale is quite likely since it was mentioned in the call. However, not all news was bad for the company: its loss narrowed to $9.8 million from $19.9 million last year, and revenue jumped to $28.1 million from $21 million.
Napster also counted 512,000 subscribers, including 4,000 non-paying university subscribers. That number represents a 26 percent increase over last year.
Although the free service may be hurting Napster now, Gorog said it would pay off in the long run. "Our new free service should lead to lower subscriber acquisition costs and improved subscriber retention while building advertising revenue," he explained.
Well, we have emule, bearshare, limewire, bittorrent, etc, etc ...... and it's all free.
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|The mass market are slowly realising that the DRM, and the restrictions it places on you, by Napster (and all online services), added to the lower quality, and lack of packaging, combined with the high price charged by online services, it's better to buy a CD...
I have just checked. on Sony Connect (http://www.connect-europe.com), the latest Razorlight album as a digital download, in lossy format, costs £7.99
You can buy the same CD delivered to your door for the same £7.99 from http://www.4cheapcds.com
The next stunt pulled by record companies, bull be to jack the price of CD's up, to try and force people into digital downloads, as it's cheaper for them.
The backlash against digital downloads has begun. It's been brought on my greedy record industry fat-cats, who despite saving tanker-loads of money by having a much cheaper distribution method, and no middle-men to pay, are not passing any of the savings onto consumers.
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|Actually your wrong about the whole DRM thing.
I was a subscriber to Napster and didn't have a problem with the DRM. The whole reason I canceled is that the service has gotten worse.
I payed the $10 a month to listen to unlimited songs.
They kept forcing updates that didn't offer me any new features and actually became a real pain such as the program always running in my tray and was a real pain to shut down.
The big blow was when I found that a number of the songs I had since I first began with Napster were switched to pay songs and I could only listen to 30 seconds unless I bought them. So I said screw this I am canceling for good.
They have also made canceling my account a real pain in the ass, now it is like canceling AOL. I like to cancel my service if I am going to be out of town and then renew when I come back but now forget it.
So that was three strikes against them so I won't renew my account. I switched to just using last.fm.
I don't agree with DRM and that is why I never buy songs from itunes but I really didn't have any problems with it on Napster.
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|The people at Napster don't understand their own problems very well. I left because of poor service and even worse quality of their Napster software. With every "improvement" they released, I had more and more trouble with navigation. It had nothing to do with their service being free. I don't use their free version because I assume it has to be worse than the paid version. I have just two words to say to Napster users... "Try Rhapsody!" They have treated me well, and their sound quality is head and shoulders above Napster. As for Napster, I hope somebody buys them and cleans up their mess. Then I might consider paying for the service.
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|HAHAAHAHA
F-OFF DRM. Serves you right Napster.
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|Napster is a great service, and extremely easy to use, with my MP3 player. You can download most of the latest music out there, within seconds, not hours like on Bittorrent, while it tries to find other people who have the same file. It is sad that younger people nowadays think downloading music is a right, and they should not have to pay for it. Look at the two posts below. So sad.
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|Odd... on the free music section of the site, you can use any one of FireFox's extensions that allow you to download flash files and then have a local copy of the stream to play back an unlimited number of times ... and then decompile the flash and you have a free MP3 courtesty of Napster.
http://www.sothink.com/product/flashdecompiler/
This being said - you can extract most MP3s being streamed on purevolume.com from your cache - but the true winner of flash-based mp3 players is MySpace. There is absolutely no way to rip MP3s from them without using programs to just capture the audio stream and resave it causing even more loss on quality.
Napster - you guys are kinda silly.
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|if one is interested in pirating music why go throu all this pain in the ass? the simple way to pirate called Bittorrent.
i'm personaly not interested in all this "music" crap being made today, so i see no reason to use any kind of online music service myself.
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