Napster

[JX030389]

Why would you even want to recognize you self with M$?

 

[Hexidecimal]

Maybe they have the amazing desire to suck

 

[Eagle]

I'm shocked M$ supports napster more than I am shocked napster is advertising with M$.

 

[mesman00]

where's there money to be made, it will be. i do'nt blame that napster kid for doing what he did.

 

[AlphaWolf]

The kid who started napster has nothing to do with this anymore, it was bought up by some other company when the original napster went bankrupt (Rio I believe.) There is only one similarity between this napster and the original napster: the name and logo. All people, property, and software associated with the original company are now gone as well.

 

[smegforbrain]

Roxio or something owns Napster now, don't they?

Of course, the current owners are banking on the name & logo of Napster from it's illegal filesharing days to provide business for them now.

Did anybody else hear that apparently MS was interested in buying Google?
Now there's a way to kill a useful site in a hurry.

 

[jollyrancher]

I don't think Microsoft's buying Google anytime soon... I think Google just sold 15% of their stock or something in an IPO.

 

[sytaylor]

please lord penguin.. dont let microsoft buy everything.. allow some form of freedom in this life, and may bill gates suffer from schizophrenia..

amen

 

[AlphaWolf]

Microsoft aint buying google.

 

[mesman00]

The kid who started napster has nothing to do with this anymore, it was bought up by some other company when the original napster went bankrupt (Rio I believe.) There is only one similarity between this napster and the original napster: the name and logo. All people, property, and software associated with the original company are now gone as well.

well ok then.

 

[jollyrancher]

There's no way that any of these fee-based music services are going to work until there's a serious Fed crackdown on all P2P, IRC and ftp music sharing sites. And what's the deal with not being able to burn this stuff or able to play it on an IPod? Not that I'm saying anything original here.

 

[AlphaWolf]

I am not buying any music online until they at least put it in a lossless compression format. If they are picky about bandwidth consumption that would be caused by raw PCM (.wav) files, then they should consider using FLAC

 

[The Khan Artist]

I'm shocked M$ supports napster more than I am shocked napster is advertising with M$.

It's quite simple, actually. Napster is MS's major tool for getting people to use DRM-encrypted WMA9. MS will do all they can (without violating ati-trust laws) to make sure that Napster succeeds.

 

[smegforbrain]

There's no way that any of these fee-based music services are going to work

Never heard of iTunes?

And what's the deal with not being able to burn this stuff or able to play it on an IPod?

You don't "burn" to an iPod. You connect it to your computer via USB or whatever and download songs onto it.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Actually, legal internet music sales are already outselling CDs.

 

[jollyrancher]

"Apple Computer launched its iTunes Music Store for Windows amid much fanfare, but the company said it doesn't have any illusions that it can make great profits from selling songs over the Internet. Instead, Apple is counting on the store as a key part of an overall music business for the company that can produce substantial profits--mainly through sales of its iPod digital music player. "The iPod makes money. The iTunes Music Store doesn't," Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller told CNET News.com in an interview Thursday after the launch of the Windows version of the store. Schiller said the music store is close to profitability but is still losing money. Apple doesn't see the business as having much long-term profit potential either."

And no, the music downloaded from Napster 2.0 is not playable on an IPod... they use incompatible file formats.

One more thing, AlphaWolf, where did you see that more songs are bought online than in music stores? Maybe with "singles" or something? If you mean overall songs from albums, box sets, etc, I'd be shocked.

 

[smegforbrain]

If Apple isn't profiting off of iTunes, then the music companies really are ripping everybody off.

They sold something like $10 million in songs in 5 months, and that was just before the release of the Windows version of iTunes.

I know that Apple is making a killing on the iPod though.

What file format is Napster using? I thought the iPod could take any mp3, not just those gotten from iTunes.

 

[jollyrancher]

Napster uses protected WMA files and iPod uses MP3, WAV, etc. So the only way to play the Napster songs on an iPod is to burn them to CD, then rip them to MP3 and then put them on the iPod.

 

[2fast4u]

i dont care who runs it actually. apple has a similar service running which is quite succesful. in terms of music im kinda old fashioned and prefer those things called cds personally

 

[smegforbrain]

Some figures for sales last week from online music stores:

Napster's first week back online, and they sold 300k songs.
iTunes, during the same week, sold 1.5 million songs.

iTunes is now up to 15 million songs sold since April, and they sell around 80% of all online songs right now.