Napster Launches To Go Service for Music Subscription
February 4th, 2005 Leave a comment Visited 50 times, 4 so far today
Napster Launches To Go Service for Music Subscription
In what could be first model of its kind that might potentially become a big threat to Apple’s iTunes Music Store, the original granddaddy of online music sharing Napster launched its new service nicknamed ‘TO GO’. Napster’s new service is a new portable subscription based model, which would let subscribers download unlimited number of songs and even play them on supported digital music players along with their PCs for a fee. The service at the moment would cost potential subscribers USD 14.95 per month.
Until now similar subscription based services (including Napster) only allowed downloaded music to be playable only on the computer. Napster as a result becomes the first and only music store at this moment to rent songs, which supports digital music players. Apple on the other hand sells songs for 99 cents each, which is ‘owned’ by the buyers and only supports iPod music player.
To popularize the service amongst the potential user base, Napster would start their massive advertisement campaign on Sunday, which is rumored to cost them around USD 30 million. It uses software technology developed by the software giant Microsoft which would monitor the file status of the downloaded music. It would render the files useless after the subscription period has elapsed.
The service would be supporting a variety of music players from Creative, Gateway, Dell, iRiver, and Samsung. However, the world’s most popular digital music player Apple iPod will not play files downloaded from Napster. Napster is hopeful that the subscription model would lure customers away from Apple’s songs for sale model. However, critics believe that people like to own the songs rather than rent them.
Will the Napster service achieve what no one else could? That is to dethrone iTunes as the most popular music store on the web… We would know in a couple of months when the first results starts pouring in…
|
TechWhack on Facebook
|
February 4th, 2005 at 5:41 am
Competition is good for consumers, it is a shame that iTunes only play on their IPOD even though one was paying.
I am glad for Napster to be so forward, itunes was not such a great deal anyway.
February 4th, 2005 at 6:09 am
I love the iPod. But Apple’s claim that music ownership is better than music rental has a major flaw. When Apple “sells” us songs via iTunes, they are not really selling us something. We are simply paying for the right to hear a song on Apple’s platform. A “purchased” iTunes song will not play on any other player (other than iTunes or iPod). What happens to your purchase when your iPod dies and you decide to by someone else’s device to replace it. The songs you “purchased” are now worthless. Actually, to me this sounds somewhat like a rental, due to the restricted rights that comes with this monetary exchange. When I rent a car, I am not allowed paint it a different color (or drive it into the ground). When I buy a car I can do whatever I want to it. All of a sudden iTunes at $.99 sounds awfully expensive given that its sound quality is a lot lower than a CD (iTunes songs are compressed) and given that it will only work as long as my iPod does. Egads Apple. Great design, but poor total customer experience –> I thought you were supposed to be thoughtful about total customer experience.