Napster Going Back to Free Downloads

conq writes "BusinessWeek reports on Napster's latest move to allow the download of free music. This time the service will be supported by online ads." From the article: "With Napster's new free service, 'we'll be able to help millions of people get out of the world of 30-second clips and of having to buy individual songs,' Gorog says. 'I don't think there's anything better we could do to turn people onto the pleasures of unlimited, legal access to music.'"

Dot-com boom busines plan?

[hal2814]

Isn't this the sort of business practice that led to the dot com boom in the first place? They're going to give everything away and hope that advertising money eventually catches up. Something tells me this isn't going to work. Maybe they'll ad a feature where they pay you for each advertiser's banner you click on.

Re:Yeah but.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Then it's really not free downloads is it. It's more a free play service

Can I Download Songs From the Napster Free Service?
You must purchase songs to download them to your computer using the Napster Free service. Once you purchase a track you can burn it to CD, transfer it to a portable device or keep it on your local hard drive.

No downloads. False alarm. Still quite cool

[shumacher]

I've been using it quite a bit today. While you cannot download with the free service, streaming seems to work quite well. I even listened to an album, and the intersitial ads (which had no audio) only came up four times while listening to a 13 track album. Plus, it's great to be able to put a link into a message board or email when talking about a certain track.

I think it's a good thing. Now, if they can keep it from being annoying even after they have some advertisers, it will be amazing.

Sweet

[iamdrscience]

Tech bubbles are awesome.

I hear a lot of people lamenting the current growth of a new tech bubble. While there are many bad things that come from tech bubbles, I think everybody's forgetting the good stuff that comes as well. In particular I'm thinking of all the stuff that companies start giving away for free or for supercheap, whether its because they think they can cover their costs with ad revenues, because they want to build users or just because they've got VC to burn and no business plan, tech startups just love to give people free shit and I think that's awesome.

Re:It's not unlimited

[akepa]

Two million songs times five leads to ten million songs before it's useless. Give me iTunes free downloads any day.

Assuming an average song length of 3 minutes:
10 million x 3 minutes = 57 years
It's going to be a long, long time before it becomes "useless".

Re:Dot-com boom busines plan?

[hal2814]

Google didn't have the massive overhead of licensing a music library. Google created the product they were giving away.

Kicking the Dead Horse

[walmartshopper67]

I see all these sites trying to get me to download "free" songs but there is ALWAYS a catch, and it is always a catch that makes it not worth it. Here at RIT we have CTRAX - same thing. Free music, as long as you don't want to keep it longer than a month or burn it to a CD. RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, etc.: We want to KEEP what we buy and what we do with it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. Until they all realize this, pirating will stay on the rise. If you don't believe me, keep making those stupid EULAs and coming up with DRM garbage, and see what happens.

Back?

[grasshoppa]

You can't go back to something that you never did.

The company that wears the napster costume isn't the original napters any more than I am.

Re:It's not unlimited

[Dachannien]

Do you really want to listen to, say, every Britney Spears song five times?

Re:Dot-com boom busines plan?

[x2A]

Google shows adverts to people for what they're looking for, when they're looking for it. This is showing adverts to people while they're already in the process of looking for something else - downloading it - and then listening to it. It's not the time that interrupting people with adverts is terribly welcome and so effective.

Piracy rationale

[siwelwerd]

I think this could be a very useful service. One of the main defenses I hear from music pirates is that they are trying the music, and usually buy later quite a bit of what they download. With a service like this, why bother pirating when you can legally download a song/album, listen to it 5 times and decide if you want to purchase it?

Ditch the Napster brand...

[telbij]

Here's an idea: lose the Napster brand

Six years ago Napster was hot. Everyone who matters (to the music industry) used it. The brand was synonymous with "listen to whatever you want whenever you want". However, the digital music market changes quickly. Napster is now synonymous with "shitty overpriced service". If they can come up with a truly great service they are better off starting from scratch than slapping a Napster label on it. If they succeed it will be despite the brand.

Probably not what I want

[jdavidb]

By somehow, I'm betting that it still won't be what Napster was in the glory days: a way to get old niche music that was out of publication and liked by me but not that many other people.

Just record your sound output for goodness sake!

[M0b1u5]

"BOOHOOS! The bad nasty manses don't wants me twos save teh muzak I listen 2 online. OH NOS!"

Look, it's not exactly rocket surgery:

Use a simple application to record the sound output of your PC sound card. Click "record" just before playback starts and click "stop" when the song ends.

Most of these apps let you name the file after you click STOP. You can usually set the quality to your preference - but if it's dished out at 192Kb/s then you'd obviously want to record at no greater than 192Kb/s.

This would be just the same as recording from the radio - sans the stupid cassette tapes. It takes like an additional 5 seconds to name the song, and specify where to save it.

Good Lord - stop bitching!

Re:Yeah! Only 60 years of music! Bogus!

[Pneuma ROCKS]

I demand at least 70 years of free music.

I'll be satisfied with a year of good music. My guess is there's not enough.

Re:Only five songs? Forget it!

[Anonymous Coward]

We're talking legitimate downloads here. Five free plays beats what you got simply because they're legal and authorised. Mod parent warz kid DOWN!

This proves that piracy was never the issue

[IGnatius T Foobar]

This proves that piracy was never the issue, and the RIAA knows it. The real issue has always been that digital distribution eventually renders the RIAA member companies irrelevant. View this as an early desparation move. Maybe they're even moving early enough to stay a little bit relevant for the long term.

Re:Pay service

[theundergroundman]

That's insane. It's like they are intentionally alienating the largest portion of the MP3 player market.

Re:just want to pay for single UN-DRM'd music titl

[babbling]

It's amazing, isn't it? We're not asking for cheap music... hell, charge more for it than the DRM versions, if you want! We just want music that doesn't use DRM, preferably using the patent-free Vorbis codec.

There's clearly a demand for this, yet it is something that no one is selling, and that isn't because they just haven't discovered that people want it yet...

Re:From TFA

[vondo]

Sounds pretty good to me. Aside from collecting stuff I can't buy, I've always used P2P to find music I want to buy. I've bought several things I wouldn't have otherwise. If music is good enough, I am happy to pay $15 an album for it (as long as I am not getting some compressed, DRMed POS.)

Re:It works great!

[AzureWrathHal]

Well...chances are he would be able to listen just fine after reinstalling windows. Unless memory fails me and microsoft doesn't support audio anymore.

C'mon, don't be such a tool, if you're gonna bash someone over something stupid, at least be funny.

Re:It works great!

[crazyjeremy]

Um... installing what? There is no install. It's html / java / script based... no install at all.

Re:It works great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you grow up already?

Re:You're Not Downloading Anything

[zippthorne]

How is streaming not downloading? Is not data entering your computer from somewhere else?

Why do musicians suddenly deserve credit for music

[jdbartlett]

And another thing! Why oh why do soldiers suddenly feel that they have such a big part in fighting wars? They're completely replaceable cogs in a much bigger wheel, but every veterans day, there they are, reaping all the credit for wars they didn't even start! I didn't see them disengaging any diplomatic negotiations or refusing to cooperate with any ambassadorial deliberations. Their government took nearly all the risk in hiring them, paying for their training, providing them with equipment, all they did was stand up and belt out a few bullets. Yet people seem to feel that soldiers play a big part in the outcome of war. Yeah, as if!