RSSNew Napster Set for Beta Launch
By David Worthington | Published October 3, 2003, 5:24 AM
Napster will make its comeback official on October 9 at a star-studded gala in New York City. After reaching its apex with nearly 60 million active users, Napster was reigned in by widely publicized legal turmoil and subsequent court rulings.
The music sharing software found a home with Roxio last year, for a price of $9 million. Roxio plans to re-launch Napster as a legit music subscription service that will appease the recording industry, and perhaps turn a profit.
A beta version of Napster 2.0 will be the first sampling of what Roxio has dreamed up for a product that previously achieved cult status and nearly universal brand awareness.
Napster is set to debut with a catalog of over 500,000 tracks - surpassing similar services to date including Apple's iTunes Music Store, RealNetwork's Rhapsody, MusicNet and other competing vendors.
Apple has found success in its iTunes Music Store, which recently surpassed 30 million downloads. A Windows version is expected to arrive shortly, augmenting Apple's customer base with millions of eager PC users.
Roxio has indicated that songs will be available as singles, or through a subscription that offers unlimited access to the entire collection along with premium content. Napster 2.0 is set to be in final form by the holidays, in time to fulfill Roxio's commitment to serve up tunes for Microsoft's Media Center 2004 PCs.
"Napster 2.0 will be the first online music service that allows consumers to enjoy their digital music wherever they want," said Roxio CEO Chris Gorog. "Our partnership with Microsoft will enable music fans to take their digital music beyond the PC so they can access and enjoy Napster on their televisions or PCs, using just a remote control."
Roxio is confident that the ostensible popularity associated with the Napster moniker, in combination with what the company claims is a "superior service," will translate into market share.
We're sorry, Napster is not currently available outside the United States. If you feel you have reached this message in error please contact Customer Support at help@napster.com
Bye Bye Napster, I won't be installing you again in a hurry!
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|I would like to see how much this 'new Napter' is going to cost... I am the kind of person that can go months without downloading a thing and then download 10 songs in a week. They need to make a like $20 a year or something like that subscription and then let you have $10 of free music. Now *that* would be quality that I would *so* buy into, but then again the RIAA wouldn't have their precious SH*T songs be worth so little. Whatever... I'm not paying a dollar a song... that's just retarded because that's pure profit for the music association and I guarantee all the artists don't have a clause in their contracts on online downloading stipend for the $$ they make with this.
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|...you'll actually be able to download files with something better than 192-kbps crap quality.
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|That's the deciding factor really.
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|I think this may actually work. Look how successful iTunes was, and that was on Macs!
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|That has to be the longest beta cycle I've ever seen.
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|and useless one LOL
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|I think this would have been a great approach before but there seems to be too much competition, if you ask me... iTunes was successful on Apple computers simple because it was on an Apple computer, if you ask me. What do I mean? Well, until iTunes, there was only so much you could do with a Mac other than publishing/production-type stuff and a VERY light selection of video games; this truly expanded the Apple computer as the multimedia beast it supposedly is IMHO. 8)
Napster DID establish massive numbers but we also have to think about the following: it came up in a time when there really wasn't many alternatives. Scorge (sp?), WinMX, LimeWire, and other services showed up soon after but Napster already had it's cult following and word-of-mouth, especially at colleges, gave them a HUGE boost. I think academia is where Napster was expanded so much; all the playground and in-class banter, I'm sure.. Now THAT'S a nice little market to tap into. =o]
Nowadays, people are still downloading free music, in spite of the risk they succumb to and, in all reality, the RIAA can't do much about it.. It's not like they can hack our firewalls to view our hard drives and invade our privacy in the process, amongst other things. If people use insecure, unencrypted communications and get caught, well, they kind of deserve it. The RIAA's only hope to make everyone happy is try to find a peaceful middleground.
I would say that the services shoud allow you to download songs for free BUT limit how many MB's a user can download a month. Users can subscribe on a per-month, per-quarter, or per-year basis. Obviously, the per-year basis will give you the greatest savings.. Then you can have different grades/levels of service. For example, a trial user can download 30MB of songs a month which is great if you download at lower sampling rates and decent if you do a more standard 128ish download. Really, if a track is ripped well, even 96K can sound really good but obviously not as crisp as like 192 and above. =o]
Anywho, the flip side of the above example is the premium user... Such a user pays the most money on whatever frequency he/she chooses to go with. That subscription level could get you let's say 200MB worth of songs a month which, really, is all you'd WANT to download on a monthly basis. This can allow people to download those REALLY long and UBER high-quality songs that break the 12MB mark easily. It's all about putting in throttling controls that ensure that nobody gets screwed over.
It seems like Napster is scrapping the peer-to-peer piece of the service and centralizing music... This approach means that things will likely get slower once more users appear; queues and other load-balancing techniques just won't cut it this way. Ideally, you want users sharing/hosting their files so that there is more variety. One of the most beautiful things about MP3 sharing is the fact that you can find songs that you probably CAN'T find at your local store cause it's out of print, rare, ultra-rare, whatever.
If the service makes searching convenient, intuitive, and fast, then the investment over other services will make sense for the user. Personally, I download MP3 files here and there. When I find REALLY good stuff, I am often compelled to buy the CD, vinyl, or whatever. If artists are afraid that they'll lose money with MP3's being legal, they should make better music. =oX
In all seriousness, the RIAA went about things in a completely, well, STUPID manner.. Sure, they're a business and profitabily is important but strong-arm tactics only make people resent you, much like Microsoft in the IT world. Taking this into account, Napster has a shot and they do have some VERY strong branding on their side.. It all depends on the flexibility of subscription options. If you have very stringent/static access types, people will definitely bish and moan.
Man, if I was Roxio and I just bought Napster, I'd make it really kick-arse... Too bad these huge companies stick with their cookie-cutter ways all the time. =oP
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