Napster On the Block 144
Ars Technica has a good wrap of
Napster hanging out a "For Sale or Partner" sign. With half a million subscribers (down from the previous quarter) and $100M in annual revenue, the company is still bleeding cash. El Reg pinpoints the trouble: "The subscription crowd – and Apple via iTunes – must fight over a few pennies per song in profit. More from the Vulture: "You have to wonder if Napster's customer base is really worth the effort for a company such as Microsoft or even Real. The Napster brand has all the gravitas of a Che Guevara t-shirt."
Metallica? (Score:4, Funny)
________________________________
Free iPods? Its legit [wired.com]. 5 of my friends got theirs. Get yours here! [freepay.com]
Napster brand associations (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Napster brand associations (Score:5, Insightful)
Che Guevera t-shirts! (Score:1)
Gravitas means... (Score:2, Informative)
Gravitas is a Latin noun that
The real question is.... (Score:2)
But this is a serious question is that supposed to be a complement or a slam? Thanks Kdawson for making an interesting article have an conundrum for a final line
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks! As a Mind about to be installed in a Culture GSV, I've been looking everywhere for the name of my ship. Who'd have thunk that I'd have found it in this little corner of the universe?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
That's my thought, too. What could they possibly be buying that makes them bring in $100M in revenue and still be unprofitable?
Re: (Score:1)
Throw in bandwidth, employees, and adverstising (Apple advertises the iPod, but that has a comfortable profit margin. I don't think I've ever seen an ad for iTMS specifically). That's not much room for profit.
My $0.02.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
500,000 users * $15 per month * 12 months = $90,000,000
This assumes that everybody's buying the more expensive service that actually lets you transfer songs to your portable player. It also assumes that nobody buys any songs, and it appears that you have to buy songs for $.99 to burn them to CD.
Is this a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
When Napster was finally re-rolled out as a subscription service, all of its fans had moved on. There was some advantage to the name recognition, but overall it had lost its chic, its cool, and its cred. It was now a bunch of suits wearing the hip little cat head and everyone knew it. The users who "made" Napster were either illegally sharing via different apps, were buying off iTunes, or were going to hold the new Napster service up to pinpoint scrutiny like an ant under a magnifying glass.
The term "irrational exhuberance" comes to mind. The people who bought the brand and built the new service got a lot of things, but didn't get *it*. Branding the service with the Napster name, while creating a certain amount of buzzz, also brought with it a certain amount of baggage, sets of varying expectations that would be hard to meet. And their declining numbers and murmurs of selling the business just go to prove that this was a bad idea that was not well-executed.
Greg
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The people who bought the brand and built the new service got a lot of things, but didn't get *it*.
Yep. Newsflash to the buyers: Napster was popular because it was a great place to get music without paying for it. Other than that, there wasn't much draw. Other people are doing a much better job on the "pay to download music" model, so unless you can do a better job of delivering on that, or unless you're willing to go back to Napster's original model, owning the Napster name doesn't do much for you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides all that, there's just the fact that there isn't money to to made from selling music online. Let me rephrase that to be completely accurate: all the money made selling music goes to the label. Not to the artist, not to the online store, but just the label. Companies keep thinking that they're going to make a truckload of money if they release the new online store, but there's no business plan for it yet. For the amount of money the labels demand, and the price consumers are willing to pay, there
Re:Is this a surprise (Score:5, Informative)
Then, he couldn't get the software to load. Turns out you have to be an administrator to load their software. What kind of crap is that? Is it an OS or something? So I had to install the software for him because there is no way I am making him an administrator.
Next, he couldn't get the software to work. I found it worked fine on accounts with administrator priveleges, but not on ones that are regular users. This was the final straw, as there was no way I was going to give my stepson administrator priveleges.
So I cancelled the account. I cited the fact that my stepson was unable to determine if their service was any good, because their software was not compatible with the Microsoft security environment.
Then, they pissed me off by charging me $1.94 because I used the service for 3 days. In fact, in those three days we downloaded exactly zero songs, and only even got connected once or twice, while testing with an administrator account. They claim to have a 15 day or so free trial, but they actually charge you a prorated amount during that period, even though you can't use their software if you set up your security properly.
I even got American Express after them to try to get the charges reversed, but Amex sided with them. If you get a free subscription, you should have to pay for it, even if you can't use it.
DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THESE SCAMMERS!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It's obsurd that the word napster is still even around.
Re: (Score:2)
Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Who is Che? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's more like sacrificing his carrier, his fortune, his family, his land and his life to fight for what he beleived, and to try to make this a better world to live in.
Did he succed? In a very reduced part of his goals, yes, he did. Fidel Castro is not everything Ernesto Guevara expected him to be, but he is a good man, an honest person, and he did and does everyday a lot for Cuba.
You question his practices? Think about what the USA is doing to Cu
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Is this April 1st?
Compared to where? The Republic of Togo? Finland? Canada?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
An HDI 0.8 or more is considered to represent high development. This includes countries of northern and western Europe, North America, Republic of China (Taiwan), Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, the Southern Cone, Israel, Kuwait and the UAE. Other countries that exhibit high human development amidst countries with lower HDIs include (with their position) Costa Rica (47th), Cuba (52nd), Mexico (53rd) and Panama (56th).
Go check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countri [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you measure by "living through infancy", then compared to the United States. Cuba has a lower per-capita infant mortality than the US. Sad but true [nytimes.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Castro is an asshole, plain and simple. He had over 700 of Batista's supporters assasinated after Batista was overthrown.
It's amazing how asses like you think that everything the US does is evil and Castro, et al are just misunderstood grandfather figures who deserve our sympathies.
I d
Re: (Score:2)
Ernesto Guevara was a rich Doctor from Argentina, who exchanged everything he had to advocate the change of the corrupt governments in Latin America that were under the control of the USA, to create a big socialist brotherhood of countrys in Latin America. He advocated the overthrow o
Re: (Score:1)
This is exactly what Castro did in Cuba. If it is bad for the US to do this, why is Castro a "good man" if he has killed anyone who stood in his way of getting rich and powerful, and kills anyone who challenges his power now?
"Ernesto Guevara was a rich Doctor from Argentina, who exchanged everything he had to advocate the change of the corrupt governments in Latin America..."
He
Re: (Score:2)
I'm going to put Matando Gueros by Brujeria while i see some videos of the WTC falling, with all those bastards dying a horrible and painfull dead you know, so i can relax and go to sleep. Stop messaging me, i will be busy.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for proving my point. I'm just saying that Guevarra and Bush are not that different in execution -- they just had different goals and different means to achieve their goals. Bush's goal is capitalism and he has an Army at his fingertips. Guevarra's was socialism and he had h
Re: (Score:2)
Read http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=196984&cid=161 41414 [slashdot.org]
2nd You ar NOBODY to tell cuba a FUCKING THING.
About the embargo:
- Cuba has been lossing 700 million dollars a year since Clinton expanded the embargo
- Bush took this one step further, trying to limit even more the flow of money, by trying to kill turism, reducing the American visits tp Cuba, even those of Cuban inmigrants (It's so terrible that Fidel won't let
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You remind me of why is so important to wear a condom, specially if you are a bastard like your father.
People like you is way more dangerous than AIDS.
Re: (Score:1)
Why is you say bads about I?
Re: (Score:2)
Just a guess
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Cuba is a mess. The best you can do is try and join the military or a few key government ins
Re: (Score:2)
Now be fair, that's not necessarily true. Take "Uncle" Joe Stalin for example: he wasn't averse to the odd purge, and did his share of brutally putting down, but apart from chronic paranoia (which anyone can suffer from) that made being around him a largely posthumous activity, was, according to testimon
Now they know... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Now they know... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the problem. Both the artist *and* the retailer get shafted (see: the recent collapse of Tower Records). The only people making money on this whole game are the labels.
In fact, Weird Al recently pointed out that he, personally gets *less* from an iTunes sale than he does from a CD sale, thanks to his contract's "New Technology" clause. So even though the label's costs are *lower* for iTunes sales, they're making more, and *taking* more from the artist.
The middlemen get everything. The retailers and the artists get nothing.
For those of us that have payed? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, I bought DRMed stuff that I was having no luck finding elsewhere. And no ITunes isn't suitable for my needs: I don't use or want an Ipod. (SanDisk Sansa if you must know)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Ask a Divx owner (Score:2)
Now if you're talking about music that you've bought at $0.99 a song, I would think that it would keep working, but I suppose you never know. I guess if I was in your position, I'd be burning it out to Audio CDs and then re-ripping it to some lossless DRM-free f
Re: (Score:2)
Now if you're talking about music that you've bought at $0.99 a song, I would think that it would keep working, but I suppose you never know.
I'm really curious about that. I'm not too familiar with the Napster service, but I've wondered about iTunes, for example-- what happens if, hypothetically, Apple goes out of business or decides to quit running the store? Sure, I can keep running iTunes on my current computer, but what about when I get a new computer? What if Apple is no longer running servers capa
Re: (Score:2)
Fuck it, just play all of the songs through Audio Hijack and recapture them. DRM be gone!
Re: (Score:2)
Last I looked, iTunes songs can be burned to plain old audio CDs.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
iTunes music store lets you burn your music to CD and re-rip it at any level of quality you want - including lossless. The DRM goes away at that point.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless you use FairUse4WM...
Pretty much the situation it was designed for.
Re: (Score:1)
Time to go... (Score:3, Funny)
1) Change name to Napstr.
2) Profit!
Yeeaaa... (Score:2)
Napster doesn't sell hardware. Furthermore Apple consciously did that. And further further more, both are doomed as DRM awareness and issues surface.
Apple is double-doomed since when everyone gets a good enough iPod, the only revenue Apple is left with is iTunes.
Hence movie downloads.. But they won't have success. Life sucks, doesn't it?
No Success? (Score:2)
Disney has found a $50M a year outlet for its old catalog requring no production costs and promotionally piggybacking on latest releases and Apple announcements. I bet they'd like more failures like that.
Re: (Score:2)
Those numbers sound impressive until you realize it's few percent of the iPod users buying a single movie out of interest.
Disney has found a $50M a year outlet for its old catalog requring no production costs and promotionally piggybacking on latest releases and Apple announcements. I bet they'd like more failures like that.
Disney definitely did find revenue. The question is what did Apple find?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose with that logic, all the automakers are doomed since with everyone gets a good enough car, no one will buy cars anyone...
You're on the right track there. Hence the laws that older cars get higher taxes because of pollution. Funny the law is written around the car age versus an actual measuremen of that car to the pollution, right?
How convenient.
Not to mention all laws making it hard to sell a second hand car: domestically or abroad.
Plus now you know why cars are manifactured so that if you hit the
Re: (Score:2)
riiight... this is why you still keep updating your tape Walkman, don't you?
Next time you won't buy an iPod, maybe you'll buy a phone with 1 TB storage and holographic projector. The appear of buying the same (or slightly enhanced) thing over and over just because it wears out is not big.
Re: (Score:2)
Well as a proof of your own words, most of the business is still on Office 97 and doesn't plan moving.
thanks (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Unregulated Markets Poster Child (Score:2)
2. This is exactly what happens in markets with wealthy, powerful companies unfettered by regulation. Price fixing, absurd litigation, even more absurd legislation.
3. Let's not forget their outdated business model which, in 2006 looks good for another 25 years. It took them 3-5 years as enforcer to force consumers to treat mp3's like vinyl.
It's like punk rock was in the 80's. Only with fiddles and twangy stuff
http://w [crowmedicine.com]
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Exactly. (Score:2)
Um, except that's exactly what people want, and that's exactly what they're doing.
So basically
Re: (Score:2)
The contrast on your morality is set too high. (Score:2)
However, most people don't think they're on the same level, as evidenced by the rampant amounts of technically illegal copying that goes on, and the significantly less-than-rampant amount of bribery and assault.
Lumping everything in life together under "legal" and "illegal" may be fine in elementary school, but most people don't think that way. If you think life is that black and white, congratulations and I wish you the best.
Y
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it is. Why don't you come join the other 6 billion of us?
Re: (Score:2)
I think what most here find so gulling, is the inequity.
Electronic distribution should mean cheap distribution, and more variety, after all, how much would it cost to put ever lables back catalog on line?
Instead, we have the labels doing what they have always done, take more from the artist, take more from the vendor, and keep more for themself. And yes,
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"They are the only fully legit music service to able to offer IPod compatible tracks and have taken the No2 slot after ITunes because of it."
For what it's worth, they're a distant second... 11% to Apple's 67% in July. But still... #2 is a pretty good accomplishment.
"That's exactly what eMusic has done. This was not a moral decision, it was purely a business one and they don't seem to be suffering from rampant piracy either."
This is because emusic's userbase skews older, with customers who have mo
Re: (Score:2)
"Electronic distribution should mean cheap distribution, and more variety, after all, how much would it cost to put ever lables back catalog on line? Instead, we have the labels doing what they have always done, take more from the artist, take more from the vendor, and keep more for themself. And yes, I know, the best we can do, is to try and starve them out, not buy stuff that comes from a major label, and I am not talking pirating."
Magnatune [magnatune.com], whose motto is "We Are Not Evil," has overhead that is muc
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
I would advance that legislation is by definition regulatory, and all of the ongoing litigation is driven by regulations. The stupid agreements that musicians make with major labels are probably the only non-regulatory thing in the whole mess. Price fixing depends entirely on creating barriers to compe
I have the original Offspring Napster T-shirt... (Score:2, Funny)
Heh (Score:1, Funny)
I hope they go under (Score:1)
huh? (Score:1)
It's actually pretty simple... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I agree with almost everything you wrote and I'm usually someone who would never rent/lease anything. But I do think Napster's subscription model offers value above and beyond the other music stores I've encountered.
The value I find in Napster is one of discovery. For $10/month I can legally download as many full albums as I want, not the useless 30 second song clips the other guys offer, and I can listen to them at
Re: (Score:2)
A Napster subscription could have been a competitor to an XM or Sirius subscription, had they marketed it that way. "Listen to all the music you like, not the music they like" sort of thing. Do your damndest to get it on portable players and interface them with cars. Do various podcasts for your subscribers, etc., and try to compete with the satellite companies.
That, I think, has some possibilities. But the subscription m
napster still exists? (Score:1)
i thought napster died long ago...
hmm... maybe lack of advertising/awareness is exactly why they're doing so poorly.
of course, I _know_ about itunes, and still wont use it...
Why Buy Napster? (Score:2)
It's really simple... (Score:2)
At least for me, it has nothing to do with the fact that it costs money. Every time I take a look at Napster, I'm frustrated that I can almost never find even mainstream stuff I'm looking for. Give me eMusic anyday... 10 times the value and more interesting content. It's a great trade off for not having the major labels.
The market seems to agree with me, too.
All you can listen to (Score:2)
First PlaysForSure victim? (Score:2)
It will be comparable to the wave of software development companies that folded or were seriously wounded after hitching their wagon to the OS/2 star (as Microsoft convinced them to do while secretly developing its own products for Windows).
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)