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Technology

Analysis: Henhouse buys Fox 96

Posted by JonKatz from the -the-napster-bertelsmann-wedding--(Part-One) dept.
Details of the Napster-Bertelsmann deal have been dribbling out all week, and they're interesting. Micro-payment subscription models are now the talk of drooling CEOs everywhere, many of whom think that Bertelsmann head Thomas Middlehoff has saved the idea of profitable intellectual property. Bertelsmann is clearly mulling the possibilities of open-media business models as well. Has Middlehoff found the perfect compromise, or has he jumped into the Big Muddy? (First in a series.)

The creation of Napster was a true convergence, the meeting of cyberspace, pop culture, open media, intellectual property and emerging Net law. Napster's agreement to be eaten alive by one of the largest info-tainmnent conglomerates on the planet is a different sort of milestone, but a big one.

The Napster-Bertelsmann deal was hailed all over Wall Street last week as one of the most significant business moves in years. Execs are watching to see if there is a way for gargantuan multinationals trafficking in intellectual property to thrive and prosper in the hacker-shaped, chaotic culture of cyberspace.

"Free ride might be over" was one USA Today headline. So much for all you thieves and pirates out there.

If it goes through, says Business Week in its forthcoming issue, then Thomas Middlelhoff, Bertelsmann CEO "conceivably will rescue the concept of profitable intellectual property in the Information Age."

Middlehoff's response to this nightmare of easily-transferred digital goods, says Business Week: "Recruit the thief to protect the jewels."

This seems a bit premature. Whatever happens to Napster, Big Media' ongoing Net nightmare is far from over. The brawl between the distributed architecture of the Net and corporatism is just getting rolling. It's clear that intellectual property needs some saving, but not necessarily in the Bertelsmann mode. The notion that music-sharing was only a free ride, a temporal window in the mediasphere for greedy and amoral kids, is too simplistic, as is the idea that nobody ever has to pay for anything non-material again. Those who are sick of the raging wars over Net content are breathing almost audible sighs of relief at the prospect of this deal bringing about something positive.

In the short term, what's most likely to happen is that Napster will become a sort of AOL for music: sanitized, commercialized, subscription-organized, the "free" zone shrinking by the week.According to Business Week and other interviews, Middlehoff "idolizes AOL CEO Stephen M. Case as a prophet of the Internet." And Case isn't big on the idea that information wants to be free.

If subscription models evolve as the sane compromise to the free culture wars, fine. People have the right to choose their own economic models for acquiring culture.This model makes a certain amount of sense, especially for the hordes of middle-class Net users piling online, some of whom are twitchy about all the furor about theft and copyright. But it seems a temporary solution. In a world where all of the textual and visual information on the planet is being archived, the very idea of what intellectual property is is going to have to be resolved, and not just by Bertelsmann and its lobbyists.

This deal might make CEOs happy, but it's bad news on several fronts, including the much-invoked artists and their rights, the diversity and choice of music, consumers and their wallets, or the architecture of the Net itself. A lot of very good things have come from open media models of information and culture-sharing, and they are likely to be threatened or lost if the Bertelsmann Corporations of the world establish an almost total monopoly on information, entertainment and culture, a monopoly literally shattered by the rise of the Net. Many techies believe that can't happen. For every Napster that gets bought, they claim, a hundred will spring up. Maybe so. Personally, I think that's a gross under-estimation of corporatism's contemporary muscle, and it's influence on government, lawmakers, and law enforcement. There will certainly be file-sharing sites, but they will become a fringe, alternative media, existing in small and sparsely-trafficked corners of the Web.

The Napster/Bertelsmann pact is an almost textbook study in how modern corporatism -- late capitalism -- works to dominate, influence and acquire culture. Even though there free music sites -- Gnutella, and Freenet -- and people will continue to use them, AOL and other commercial sites have proven that millions of people will gravitate towards subscription models online if they are cheap enough and hook users up with enormous volumes of information and services.

As AOL merges with Time Warner, the control-and-sanitize model will become more ubiquitous, especially if companies like Bertelsmann pile on. In that context, the Napster-Bertelsmann hookup takes on a different hue -- as a blueprint of the strategy more and more multinationals will use in their ongoing effort to make up for lost time and commercialize the Net. Bertelsmann and the other companies have made it clear they will continue to go after any mini-Napsters that pop up. If they can't get them all, they can sure get the big ones. The shame here is that multi-nationals like Bertelsmann and AOL/Time-Warner are the only entities with the resources to fund and market those kinds of sites and services, develop the technology and the volume of information that could make commercial file-sharing sites work.

The details of the deal invoke the "Sopranos" more than the Net. Middlehoff is proposing to reshape Napster by lending the site $50 million -- pocket money -- and reserving the right to take an equity stake at a later date. Napster is supposed to use the money to develop technology and services designed to get users paying for music. If Napster behaves, says Business Week, Bertelsmann will settle its copyright infringement suit and ask other music and entertainment companies to do the same. If it doesn't, then there won't be a Napster. This is cooperation corporate style, sort of the way John Gotti might have done it, only there's no need for guns.

Middlehoff told a number of reporters last week that Bertelsmann wants to cooperate with rivals and turn Napster into a new kind of platform for downloading the entire range of media products, including books, films, and magazines from any company that wants to participate. Bertelsmann really has nothing to lose by going into business with Napster. The company acknowledged that it's aggressive campaign to brand music downloaders as pirates and to intimidate them into paying exorbitant rates for music has failed miserably.

For music lovers, though, the sense of betrayal was palpable. Messages poured into SaveNapster.com, reported USA Today last week. "I believe Napster's sole idea of the future was to be a part of the money-hungry record industry," messaged Jeff Margel of Northumberland, Pa.

It's impossible to know what Napster's motives really were, but the site had long been seeking help in its expensive fight against the music companies, right up to the moment they started cheerfully exchanging T-shirts with Bertelsmann officials in New York, portraying themselves as heroes and victims in the information wars.

Music industry analysts said it appeared that Bertelsmann's idea is for Napster to evolve into a two-tier, with both paid and free elements. Hank Barry, chief executive of Napster, has suggested that a monthly fee of $4.95 might be appropriate. AOL's $l9.95 price has also been mentioned. Napster would maintain a free, promotional component, but officials get vague when they are asked how a free service would differ from the membership one.

Other analysts, including some quoted by the New York Times, said that one plan under discussion includes adding unspecified "new technologies" that would impose a time limit on downloaded recordings. Non-members might be able to download digitized recordings which expire after a certain period, while members who pay their monthly fees would be able to download files permanently. Members might get other perks, like exclusive recordings from certain artists or the opportunity to pay for a higher-quality download that would work better on their personal CD's or MP3 players.

Until just a few days ago, Bertelsmann (whose major labels include Arist, Ariola, Arte Nova, RCA, New Talents, Windham Hill) was teamed up with the other big music and entertainment companies -- Sony, Disney, Universal, Sony, AOL/Time-Warner -- spewing legal warning notices, intimidating colleges and other institutions that permitted Napster and other free music sites to operate on their servers, branding music lovers and downloaders as pirates, filing lawsuits, hiring lobbyists to pass laws like the DMCA, and funding a barrage of spindoctors and publicists who successfully got the media to sound numerous alarms that a generation of obliviously amoral kids were steading ideas and wantonly ruining the very idea and sanctity of intellectual property.

Sony, Warner, Universal Music and EMI all said they would continue to pursue their lawsuit against Napster. Spokespeople for several of these companies, reported the London Financial Times said they felt they had to continue their struggle against free music in the courts, since there was nothing to prevent "Napster two, three or four" from springing up."

The other companies may be missing at least some of the point of Bertelsmann's deal: Napster/Bertelsmann could afford to play around for years with different models for music distribution, offering more music for little money in new ways. They could even begin re-building a culture of music acquisition.

But it won't be easy. A Pricewaterhouse Coopers survey released to USA Today Friday found that 75 per cent of U.S. music downloaders said they would stop downloading free music if they had to pay. The notion of free music suffered another setback this week. Listen.com, a music directory whose investors include the five major record labels and Madonna, bought the assets to Napster competitor Scour for $5.5 million. Music lovers are already checking out alternatives among the sites on some of the messaging systems, and on open sites like Songspy.com, which reported a huge influx of users in the wake of the Napter/Bertelsmann announcement.

Songspy, which has been online for a only month and claims 30,000 members, has pledged to stick to its policy of free music. "We don't want to betray our users like Napster did," promised Gavin Hall, Songspy's co-founder. Wonder if Hall will feel that way when Sony's lawyers come around in a few months, flex some muscle and suggest a "relationship."

Reading between the lines, Bertelsmann seems to be edging closer to trying to figure out how to commercialize the open media models that sprang from the open source and free software movements. As Lawrence Lessig pointed out in Code, the key to controlling and regulating cyberspace isn't law, but control of code. Regulation of cyberspace is possible, writes Lessig, but that regulation is imposed primarily through code. "What distinguishes different parts of cyberspace are the differences in the regulations effected through code. In some places, life is quite free, in other places more tightly controlled, and the differences in degrees of freedom are simply differences in the architectures of control -- that is, differences in code." Thus the money Bertelsmann is giving Napster is supposed to go to creating code that will make it possible to charge consumers for music.

In moving to acquire a file-sharing online pioneer like Napster, Bertelsmann may also be grasping what the other music and entertainment companies are still resisting -- the company that knows the most about and controls the most code will ultimately control the biggest chunks of cyberspace. Bertelsmann is taking a savvy approach: let the other big companies hire lawyers and try and stop the free music movement legally. If they can, Bertelsmann will still benefit. If they can't, Bertelsmann will be ahead of the curve and well-positioned.

Bef
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Analysis: Fox Buys Henhouse More

Analysis: Fox Buys Henhouse

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  • Napster and the like are just using the same old .COM business model:

    1. Collect MP3s
    2. ?
    3. Profit

    The whole point of a .COM is to be bought out or IPO. After that, fuck it. I'm surprised the music companies didn't realize sooner that they could just buy out these companies for chump change and use them to prevent 'competitors' from becoming popular. It's not like they didn't want to be bought out.
    ---

  • AMD didn't just start in that Dresden factory, they contracted it with Siemens. Therefore, they are in a contractual alliance with Siemens, and are therefore part of the Fourth Reich.

    Intel, on the other hand, has its own fab in Puerto Rico, Malaysia, and other locations. As far as I know (or as far as the public "needs to know"), they haven't entered into a contractual agreement with other companies.

  • A Pricewaterhouse Coopers survey released to USA Today Friday found that 75 per cent of U.S. music downloaders said they would stop downloading free music if they had to pay.

    Seems to me that logically 100% of people would stop downloading free music if they had to pay.

  • Napster is neither Open Source nor Free Software (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09, 2000 @08:00AM (#634465)
    Before the Napster move, the Open Source and Free Software realms seemed beyond the grasp of companies like Bertelsmann.

    I'm surprised nobody else has pointed out that the Napster software is neither Open Source nor Free Software. The Napster client is no-cost, but not Free in the sense we are used to talking about it. I have a hard time believing that the "new" Napster membership service will be any different from the existing service--closed system.

  • Establish a Napster like service owned and run cooperatively by the musicians themselves. They can can decide how to charge, how to divide the money, etc. Cut the middleman out and look out for their own interest.
  • Boy, took a long time for another or your idiotic relapses didn't it, Bob?

    Goddamned you're a fucking idiot.


    Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
  • That's the beauty of it from my point of view. The people that are going to pay the $5 are the Backstreet boy and N'Sync fans. Let them flood Napster all for the same song. The rest of us will go to the numerous other mp3 sights, precisely the way we did it when Napster was born. I don't know about the rest of you, but when I'm downloading a song, I don't want advertisements for "14 CDs for a penny" flashing infront of my face.
  • Bertelsmann was the publishing company that supported the ideals of the third reich in the late 20's and early 30's, and who rode the nazi party's wave to domination. The company was a bavarian family run business, and espoused self-censorship of their materials as being good, responsible citizens. During the nazi period, Bertelsmann were given all of their competitors properties, all those that were seized for being "subversive" of the state. Most of those competitors made their fortunes during the relatively free era of the Weimar Republic, by publishing books and magazines which touched on many subjects the nazis didn't like.

    After the fall of the Third Reich, Bertelsmann laid low and collected war reparations from the Marshall Plan, and generally tried to distance themselves from the horror of the war. They used the claim of being just a simple book seller, who by sheer coincidence ended up owning 100% of all publishing and distribution in Germany at the end of the war. They also took over most publishing in the occupied countries, using the power of the SS judges to "lawfully" transfer ownership. After the war, attempts were made in most countries to break the Bertelsmann connection, but with not any great effect, and those business connections continue to this day.

    During the 50's and 60's, Bertelsmann became the largest employer of ex-SS officers. Whenever an SS officer was released from prison after serving time for war crimes, Bertelsmann would send a car to pick them up, and they would automatically have a job with the company.

    Because of the large concentration of war criminals in the company, it has long been the focus of allied intelligence services. I've heard rumours that the company employs state of the art counter-surveillance at all their main buildings, and their internal communications are some of the most secure in the world.

    I've never worked directly on Bertelsmann's networks, but I've a few colleagues who picked up all their encryption and security experience there. The funny thing is they used Crypto A/G [mediafilter.org] gear for all their inter-office communication because they all believed GCHQ/Echelon was watching them.

    More recently, another proposed BMG merger fell through, which generated surprisingly little press. It was the topic of discussion over beers a few weekends ago, and one of my drinking buddies from the Commission made the very cryptic comment "Those old nazis still have many enemies with long memories, and they are all in a position to keep Berty down". There was a young and naive crowd, the ones who don't believe in any conspiracy unless it is first seen on the documentary series "the X Files", who didn't catch on at all to that remark. But there were several older and more clued-in people who nodded imperceptibly and exchanged knowing glances.

    the AC
  • 10 seconds eh? took you that long to close the window? Maybe you really wanted to watch !!!
  • you want to find more obscure bands? here's a Napster tip...

    instead of just searching for a band that you can't find, search for a more popular band in the same genre. find a user that has a lot of songs by that artist on a fast connection. add them to your hotlist. then go and check out their library. chances are, they'll have some pretty obscure artists that are the same type of music that you might never have heard of or never thought to purchase the cd.

    this is the way I got into Paul Van Dyk, Gatecrasher, Christopher Lawrence, and one of my new favorites, Thievery Corporation.

    All these and more from enjoying Paul Oakenfold and Moby...
  • I thought about mentioning that, too, but I figured I had caused enough trouble by ranting about Katz above. ;-) Since you brought it up, though, I have to admit that I'm a little surprised, too. Napster has, from very early on, been a purely commercial venture. It's been a risky one, that's for sure, especially since nobody has been able to figure out how to make it profitable yet, but this deal with Bertelsmann sure looks like a good start. But the bottom line is that Napster is just another profit-hungry corporation with no interest in Free Software or Open Source. They're not even friendly toward the Free Software and Open Source people. They're refuse to release details of their protocols and they got pissy when Napigator listed their servers. It's too bad that we in the Free Software/Open Source community choose to ignore these issues just because Napster gives us so much free-beer music.
  • Think about it: AMD providing the CPUs, Siemens, the RAM, and BMG, the content. And it seems that there's nothing to stop them.

    Sometimes I wish that the tactics of Soldier of Fortune could be put into place here. It sounds like an internal coup would be the only thing to stop this from happening.

  • The only way that this could possibly work, is if Napster's current system was shut down completely. This new system isn't about file sharing-- it's about downloading material from a central source.

    Assuming that the offer has been made in good faith (a big assumption, yes, but bear with me), there is no way that Bertelsmann and friends would want to poison the well by allowing inferior or broken copies of their music running around inside the new Napster. Likewise, they won't want non-involved companies' music in there, either-- it's far too risky legally, and they really don't want to help their competitors if they can't help it.

    If this goes through, the original Napster system is going to vanish in a puff of smoke. Screw indie bands, screw amateur parody remixes, and doubly screw rare sound clips.

  • I like the way that BMG is spinning this as a new business model. Publishers all over the web, most notably, ESPN, have been using the micro-subscription model forever. ESPN gave away their content free for the first 6 months after they launched in 95/96, then created the "Insider" subscription for $3.95 a month. I've been hooked ever since, because I'm a sports junky.

    Music junkies will gladly do the same. It is the attraction of niche publishing, find an audience hooked on a type of info (sports, MP3s, etc) and then charge relatively small amount for the right to access. Then, make sure your audience is huge and you've got a really nice revenue stream.

    Napster will be a roaring success under this model. They have huge market and mind share, they have the name and attitude. Heck, sign me up now!
  • "But it won't be easy. A Pricewaterhouse Coopers survey released to USA Today Friday found that 75 per cent of U.S. music downloaders said they would stop downloading free music if they had to pay."

    Heh... if they had to pay 100% would stop downloading free music!
  • That link to the Dornemann resignation should be http://www.bmgentert ain ment.com/news/articles/11052000b.html [bmgentertainment.com], not the one to Zelnick's as above.

    Sorry about that.

  • Nice try sloth boy, this is an obvious troll. We all know that Loreena McKenitt is a japanese porn star who has been in such films as "One country, one hole" and "The Girlz R back in town"

    She has nothing to do with music or technology or insanity for that matter.

    I've seen your posts quite a bit and I'm on to you. You go around denouncing the real trolls while you are troll yourself. The gig is up fatboy, it's time to come clean.
  • You stupid fuck:

    Loreena McKennitt and her private record label Quinlan Road [quinlanroad.com]

    To quote Eric Cartman: "Suck my balls."

    Yeah, yeah, I have just been trolled. And you have a nice day asshole.


    Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
  • why couldnt they just do both? The cost of running napster is considerably low (in comparison)

    But if you pay the five bux you get SUPERNAP! which GAURENTEES highspeed highquality downloads better organized and categorized then the stuff presently on ~lowly napster.

    Catch my drift?

  • Does anyone know any bigwigs at Fox or Warner Brothers?

    Well, like just about everyone else in America, I'm fascinated by our recent election.

    One thing I haven't seen suggested is a proposal that Bush and Gore share the Presidency, they could even live in the White House together.

    I think there's a lot of potential there, and for Fox or WB, a potentially great new series.

    I've even written a theme song.

    Meet Al Gore, who's lived most everywhere,
    From Vietnam to Trafalgar Square.
    But Dubya's only knows the way
    A boy can see from in the USA --
    What a crazy pair!

    But they're Presidents,
    Vote splitting presidents all the way.
    One pair of matching bookends,
    Different as night and day.

    Where Al Gore adores the environment,
    Liberals and bigger government,
    Our Dubya loves to make cons fry,
    And a tax cut makes him high --
    What a wild duet!

    Still, they're Presidents,
    Vote splitting Presidents and you'll find,
    They laugh alike, they walk alike,
    At times they even talk alike --
    You can lose your mind,
    When Presidents are two of a kind.

    copyright 2000, George D. Haberberger

    So, If anyone can put me in touch with a studio bigwig, I'd appreciate it.

    Thanks,

    George
  • I won't believe that the 38 million users are all American...
    For those belonging to a different country this will kill Napster for sure.

    Even if it's a fair deal for a US citizen it won't be for a poor country in Asia, so they have to turn in other direction...

    So do we predict an Asian Napster? Of course, they already have a big black market, it's only one step to go digital...

    What difference does it make to us? Perhaps it will make more time consuming to dl the files we want, but we will get them for sure.

  • Micropayments (Score:3)

    by g_mcbay ( 201099 ) on Thursday November 09, 2000 @07:08AM (#634483)
    I hope these people realize that if they go with micropayments (I'd be all for that), its a one time charge PER SONG.

    If they try to implement a system that charges per-listen they are going to be as bitterly disappointed as the Divx people (Circuit City's DVD-ish format, not the codec)! Particularly since they are going to be competing with non-controlled open P2P networks.

  • But Not Without Quality Control! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    5 bucks sounds reasonable, until you start downloading rips fulls of pops and files made by inferior encoders.

    I would only pay for MP3's if I could be guaranteed MP3's (or the equivalent) at at least 256kbps encoded by the best encoders the music industry could afford.

    I will not pay to download stuff of unknown quality from some kid's machine.

    Hell, if I could get raw WAV's (professionally ripped, of course), I'd pay $25-$50 a month for the right to do so.

  • maybe I need never buy another album already.
    This is slightly OT, but I think that this is an awfully dark view of your future. You're giving yourself fair odds that you've stopped developing and growing in your artistic tastes. And in how much else? Do you see anything ahead that isn't just stuff you've already done, heard and thought?

    I'm a bit older than you, and my tastes have gone through a couple of revolutions already. In my teens, it was rock, rock, rock - but I got bored silly of the top 40 stuff early on, too monotonous. Then I got hooked on jazz-fusion and other stuff. I haven't listened to rock in a couple of years (though I have some Joe Jackson and a little REM on my shelf), but I've got tons of hard-to-classify stuff like Spyro Gyra and UZEB along with some light jazz, harder fusion, older electronica like Tangerine Dream and some of the New Age/celtic stuff like Loreena McKennitt.

    I'm starting to branch again, this time into bluesier artists like Chris Smither and I'm learning the attractions of classical. Ten years from now I may not listen to anything out of my current collection more than once a week, if that. I expect that it'll sit there until my future kids come along and start rifling through the old stuff to see what they can find, and give me huge grins when they re-discover the fun of "Optical Race" or even "Brain Salad Surgery".

    I see a lot of new-to-me music in my future. I couldn't abide listening to the same old things for the rest of my life, and I don't see how you could either. This is where (getting back on-topic) I see the usefulness of services like Napster, whether they go corporate or not. They'll be there to let me get my hands on the stuff that tickles my changing fancy, whether it's Greg Howard or Rimski Korsakov. I'll shape the market by only paying for value; if they try packaging the same old crap for $20, I'll take my money elsewhere. Funny, most of my CD collection was bought used, I guess that's what I've been doing for the last 5 years....

    I am the consumer. Hear me roar.
    --

  • I think your idea of micropayment might be much different from my (their ?) idea of micropayment. :) I've always thought it was the concept of making payments at small intervals, not necessarily small payments. For instance, buying one song might be a micropayment, since you are paying at smaller intervals when you pay for every song on a CD instead of for the whole thing, even if the end cost is the same. Or maybe they'll charge per minute of music downloaded... who knows. All this pay-for-play stuff scares me. Corporations would rather have us rent, lease, or pay-to-play for everything rather than owning anything. shiver
  • now Gnutella gets tested. soon we'll find out if it can handle large numbers of users or if the network breaks down with too many nodes. I heard about this specialized client that has special clients that keep updated lists on the main client. Then when searches come in, the client only has to check the list (like a mini napster) thereby protecting the special clients from unnecessary trafic. If enough of these become distributed throughout the gnutella network and people share files like they are supposed to, then we have our free, fast alternative to pay napster. I wish I had a link for you, but I can't find it, so someone who reads this and knows what I'm talking about, please reply and post a link. If not for me, then for the children.

  • it's like a drug. can't get it one place, look around, do some research, get it somewhere else.

    lets not forget that IRC, Hotline, Aimster, FTP's, and tons of other means of getting a "fix" exist.

    you really think the kiddies will decide "okay, I can't get it for free... but what the hell, i'll put the $5 a month on my parents credit card"?

    doubtful. one of their more informed friends will teach them how to use IRC just the same as that friend taught them how to use Napster.
  • Considering the quality difference between a midi and a wave or mp3 file, I'm not impressed. I consider that wasted hard drive space.

    Seriously, for the avid music listener, $5 a month is not any serious commitment, especially when one considers how much people do spend on CD's on a regular basis. I'm a college student, and I can certainly attest that $5 is a much happier alternative to $20, $30, or even $40 a month needed to gain the collection of music I have now.

    Also, I like being able to get individual songs, instead of the entire CD. I have a Cake song that I particularly like, but I don't relly like Cake, and would never buy a cd from them just for this one song. I like the options, and with a steady income, $5 is not a bad deal.
    ---------------------
  • Oh god dude, please, please, PLEASE, tell me you are shitting me!

    I for one will never grow tired of good new music. I play guitar, piano, harmonica, violin, viola and a few other instruments, and I'm always looking for new musical styles and new music in general. Not everything is good, for sure, but there is always something new coming along that is worth a listen.

    I'm nearing thirty myself (just turned 27), but I have no plans to slow down my musical interest at all. I find it sad when someone starts to take the view that you've proposed. I used to play in a few bands here and there. I still play the instruments I've always enjoyed, even though I don't have the time to dedicate to a band. And the reasons are simple.

    There are always those people around you, especially men, that as they age they hold on to that one shining moment in their youth. Usually it is the high-school jock that never got over that one game where he scored five touchdowns (Al Bundy anyone?). That was the high point of his life. And that's all he talks about or thinks about. Then there are the people like some of the guys I played with in bands. Rather than moving forward with their lives, trying new things, finding mates or whatever, they are still practicing those same old songs the same old way. They are the musical equivalent of that guy that's always talking about his great high-school football game. They can't let it go, they can't move forward. They keep talking about that one night when the stage lighting was perfect, the girls were hot, and the crowd was wild. Sure it was awesome, and I still look back on it with fondness. But I've moved on.

    I am a hard-core metal-head. But I always did like other genres as well. My bands were always hard, heavy, fast, and loud. But, since the demise of 'real' metal, I haven't sat around and pouted. I haven't whined about how there's nothing for me to do, nobody appreciates my music, blah, blah, blah. I moved on to the other things I always wanted to accomplish. I still collect music from that era, and many, many others (including classical (love Mozart!), American folk, and many others), and I still love to crank up the old guitar when I'm feeling a bit pissy (it's a great way to relieve stress), but I've moved forward.

    Since that time, I've gotten married, I've studied my ass off and learned computers, become the head of IT for a mid-sized business, and started planning for a family. The life I wanted when I was sixteen? No, not really. But would I have been happier with that life than the one I am living? Probably not. I found that I've struck a nice balance between that 'rock-n-roll' life that I always wanted, playing the occassional concert and still working on my music, and the life that I always knew I 'needed' to live, having a wonderful understanding wife and planning a family and a future for myself and them.

    Don't stop growing dude. I realize I started rambling here, but seriously, don't give up on there being something 'more' out there. Maybe the crap on the radio won't appeal to you (it never did appeal to me), but there is surely something out there that you would like. If nothing else, start looking backwards. You would be suprised at the similarities between some of the heavier/obscure rock styles and the really old classical styles of music. Anyway, just don't close up into a little shell of yourself. As one of my friends put it, if you start to do that, at some point you become a charicature of the person you wanted to be, and fail to be real. Be real, keep learning, keep seeking.

    Of course, having said all of that, you probably just think I'm some raving lunatic. Fair enough, I probably am.


    Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
  • "Has Middlehoff found the perfect compromise, or has he jumped into the Big Muddy?"

    For all I care about Mister Megalomaniac(TM) himself, he can go jump into the river Styx. I won't be there to hold his ankle, cause if I was, I'd push him down!

  • Loreena McKennitt is one of my favorite artists (and this from a professed metal-head).

    I heard a song of hers on the radio one morning on the way home from work (night job) and actually pulled over to listen to it I was so enthralled. I went to town that day and picked up the album (Book Of Secrets, great album). I have yet to hear anyone say anything bad about her music. I wish more people could hear her stuff, but I guess if it went to far she would start commercialising, and that would not be cool in the least.

    Anyway, to go on-topic for a moment. I've never used Napster, and have no desire to use it. I have too many other ways to find out about new music, and I purchase CDs of anything I like (and then rip them to MP3 and store them on my little file-server, 7 GB and counting).


    Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
  • Hardly. In fact, they're exacerbating the situation. Our only choice is to abolish corporatized entertainment as we know it.
  • I completely agree. Everyone is getting so excited about this agreement, but I question why Bertelsmann needs Napster. What they need is SDMI-like technology. Napster's technology is peer-to-peer file sharing -- something conspiciously absent from every guess of the what their future business model might be. I don't even see how the napster user base will help them, since in affect, this new plan is as different from the current napster as bikes are to cars -- both are modes of transportation (music distribution), but work under completely different paradigms. People who like napster for the find-any-music-you-want aspect, won't have this under the agreement. People who like napster for the free music aspect, won't have that. Only people who like the pure convenience of mp3's will find overlap between the new and old services.
  • calls the tune.

  • I wonder why you got marked down as being off-topic when the parent poster didn't? You actually did answer the question and I concur that the Big Muddy is the Mississippi and it did earn that name from the mud and silt rolling along with it. Someone must not like you.;-)

    Crackpipe moderation strikes again.


    Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
  • You mean nobody is going to use Napster's network if they have to pay. There's still the somewhat decentralized OpenNap [sourceforge.net] network which is free both ways.

  • Radical Change in Business Model (Score:5)

    by StormyMonday ( 163372 ) on Thursday November 09, 2000 @08:41AM (#634498) Homepage
    Currently, you don't download any music from Napster. That's their whole defense in the lawsuits. They simply act as an information broker, putting people who want to download music in touch with people who are willing to serve it up.

    With Bertelsmann in the act, the model has to change. Why should I put the latest Barfing Weasels CD on my server if somebody else gets paid for *my* bandwidth and disk space? Additionally, putting music on a server is legally questionable. If money gets involved for downloading, it becomes even more questionable. (Hmm. Perhaps part of the deal would be "amnesty" for people who put up songs for downloading through an "approved" broker? I expect a rash of lawsuits against people who allow downloads via "nonapproved" (ie, Gnutella) sites....)

    If Napster starts charging, the only way it will work is if they have their own servers with music on them. This is a good deal for Bertelsmann (and whoever else gets in on it); it's essentially free money. It's a good deal for users, who get guaranteed quality and availability. (Hope they've got a *big* pipe!) However, it changes the business model so totally that it might as well be a different company (as well as needing a lot of new hardware!)

    It can be a roaring success if they treat it right, particularly if the price is reasonable. US$5/month sounds about right. Unfortunately, the big multinationals seem to treat a new business area like a small child treats a kitten -- they love the idea, but then they squeeze it to death.


    --
  • Actually, if you read the Napster web page [napster.com] on the deal, you will see that the idea is a simple, two-tiered system. A flat rate (strongly suggested $4.99) for a series of perks, and normal, unlimited access will continue to be free.

    People should be very careful before passing judgements about the way the system will work. I think most of this is over-emotional reactionism, just like when NBC declared Florida a Gore state at 8:00 Tuesday!
    ---------------------
  • From the article: Has Middlehoff found the perfect compromise, or has he jumped into the Big Muddy?

    From the post I replied to: WTF is the Big Muddy?

    From my reply: the Big Muddy is the Mississippi

    Where does the offtopic rating come from? Oooh, if only I could metamod this...
  • If the free(beer) Napster Network goes away, there are always other Napster-compatible networks [napigator.com] running free(speech) server software [sourceforge.net] and client software [google.com].
  • Do you have a source document to back up this claim?
    ---------------------
  • Musical subculture? OK, whatever that means. I pretty much fell out of any 'subculture' because I liked too many things to be defined.

    Oh, and as to your 'marketing scheme' comment:
    If you really believe that, that's cool. Maybe music doesn't matter to you. But to most people, they don't just all of a sudden say, "Hey, I've had enough of what I've continued to collect up to this point in my life. I'm almost thirty, time to stop and pretend I'm dead." And that's the area I was attempting to address in the previous poster's sentiments.

    Music to me has never been about indentifying myself as part of some group. It has always been about so much more, it is a way to indentify myself, but not by 'marketing group' or 'subculture' or whatever you are trying to call it. It's about picking up an instrument, whatever I'm in the mood for, and playing my soul out. It's about playing what I feel, what I see inside myself, and what I believe. So music is a way to identify myself. But trying to say that means I'm pegging myself as a part of some marketing scheme is selling it so short it isn't even funny. I don't stick to one style of music. I can't be pegged as one 'market segment'. I'm me, and what I like, I listen to, or create if I can't find what I'm looking for at any particular moment.

    The first poster in this sub-thread made it sound like he was pulling the old, "I'm thirty, time to give up on living" line, and that sort of attitude, especially when done willfully, is just sad beyond belief.

    If all you got out of my post was that I was pegging myself into a musical genre, then I guess I really suck at getting a point across. The point was that you shouldn't ever stop collecting whatever it is you enjoy collecting. Whether it's music, books, computers, software, movies, or just general knowledge about the world around you. Just because you're "all grown up" doesn't mean it is time to stop learning and stop growing on the inside. Yeah, I know I sound like a philosophical idiot right now. But I hate it when people throw away the opportunity to keep growing just because they think they are old. 30 is no more the age limit of learning than 40 or 50 or any other arbitrary number. My great-grandma is 98 years old and she still reads new books all the time, and keeps trying to learn about things. The day she stops that is the day she truly becomes 'old' in my eyes. Until then, she's just that funny lady that hands me kool-aid floats when I go to visit her. We could all learn a lesson from her, if she was just willing to teach the world....


    Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
  • It is hard not to take this opportunity to point out that Mojo Nation (http://www.mojonation.net) is already out there providing most of what Bertelsman is demanding of Napster but with more flexibility and future potential. Check out our updated beta (version 0.919.0) for significantly improved download/publication speed and a much easier installation process. Win2k/NT support has also been added!

    jim
  • Why bother with decryption at all? Reprogram a different layer of the code playing the music - write a sound driver that also makes a copy of the bytes passed to it. No need to break into anything, you're just "logging" the data played over your sound card.
  • (The same way as since 1996, but nobody wants to notice fundamentals [e-gold.com] in an age of Internet hype) is by using good ol' e-gold [e-gold.com]. I can prove it to anyone who sends me an account number and says they saw this on /.. Someday, the music business will notice our growth [e-gold.com], I hope...
    JMR

  • Isn't this obvious? (Score:3)

    by Pickle ( 94868 ) on Thursday November 09, 2000 @06:36AM (#634507)
    The only reason they agreed to this is that they know users won't use Napster if they have to pay, not because they think the micro-payment business model is viable. This model will kill Napster and there is no risk for them, Napster takes all the risk, pretty sweet deal. Any backward-thinking record exec would see this and get behind this agreement full tilt.
  • Okay, nobody is going to use Napster if they have to pay... The people saying that are just lying...
  • for the privledge of downloading all the music I want. I mean when you think about it, that is pretty cheap all things considered. If I wasn't downloading all those songs, I might be buying a Cd every month only for the three to five songs on it I actually want. For $5 a month, that would be a pretty big savings. And since I usually only listen to music on my computer (no cd in car), I don't have to worry about mp3 players or anything like that. Now if they go with the $20/month price, things might change...

    Eric Gearman
    --
  • I already have 146764 midi's. Really, NOT a lie. and besides, I can't stand listening to mp3's over a 56k modem.


  • Hmmm. (Score:3)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) on Thursday November 09, 2000 @06:43AM (#634511) Journal
    Well, as I see it, Bertelsmann & Napster have a choice:

    1. Offer a "micropayment" service and fail
    2. Offer a flat rate service and succeed (think ASCAP as the model)

    Maybe, just maybe, they'll choose number 2, and we'll still have our music. If they don't, there will always be someone else trading pirated MP3s (think Gnutella).

  • All it takes is me say paying the 5 bucks a month and then downloading everything and anything and burning archival CDs then I can give these mp3s to anyone I want through the conventional internet. Easy.
  • Pay per use has never been popular look at Divix not many people wanted to pay each time they watched a movie no matter what kind of convience.
  • Now, there's the Fourth Reich, which is composed of German mega-media/tech companies

    How is this any different from the American or Japanese mega-media/tech companies? Sounds like simplistic nationalistic jingoism to me. I've accused you of being a troll before; add flamebaiting to that list.

  • I have a huge collection of MP3's, al very legal, I spend 200 to $300 every few months buying CD's (from metropolis and a few other indie labels). I make mp3's for myself, and offer them to my friends, so I purchase most of the music I buy, I support my artists I listen to, and I don't mind sharing my CD's / MP3's with others, call me a hypocrit if you want.

    But I can tell you straight, when I used napster, I never downloaded anything, only supplied, and I certainly will not be paying my money to a huge company so I can supply them with music to download. Because if you remember correctly, Napster was about people sharing music with people, no Companies extorting money for music.

    Ah well, the cat is out of the bag, they will not be able to stop mp3's, it will go under ground, and new formats will arise to replace it, we do not have to use the formats that will limit our listening and expire songs books whatever, and You know what I say to micropayments, I say shove them up the fucking asses of the companies who want us to rent music and other media.

    When I pay for something it is mine :P
  • I hate to join the ranks of those shouting "K4TZ SUX0RZ!!11!" but dammit... this guy just doesn't fit in on Slashdot. It's clear he just doesn't have a firm grasp of the technology he's writing about. In this article, he refers to Gnutella and Freenet as "sites." They're not - they're programs, they're networks, but they have nothing to do with the web. We all know that, but Katz misses this distinction completely. It's bad enough that someone claiming to be a professional writer misuses "its/it's" as Katz does in this article, but that's a minor mistake and can be forgiven. What I can't get over is his use of a lowercase L in place of the digit 1 (one). What's this guy thinking? That's a habit one acquires from working on ancient typewriters which didn't even have 1 or 0 (one or zero) keys because a lowercase L or uppercase O would suffice.

    The sad truth is that Katz is a product of the old-school media he's so fond of criticizing. If he really wants to be a part of the Slashdot community, great - the more, the merrier - but he really needs to take the time to better understand the technology he writes about. I'm not saying the guy needs to become a hardcore coder, but he really needs to be able to grasp the difference between "the internet" and "the web," as well as the difference between a lowercase L and the number 1.

  • I think this is a wonderful idea, on a flat rate plan at least. I would pay happily, and more importantly, End Users, will pay happily. And thats really what this is all about. They aren't trying to get the tech savy; die hard, all things should be open source crowd(us). To pay for the abuility to dl content. Because we have proven, with DeCSS, Gnutella, and orignialy with Napster, that we will find ways around something if we want to. And for the most part, it stays in our circle. (Not to totaly true, but for the most part.) They are trying to get the End Users of the world. Build this thing, put a few hundred million in marketing behind it (pocket change to a company of this size), and boom. They have a viable workable buisness model that will reach the masses. and they will make money off it. If you build it, people will come.
  • So many problems with the whole idea of micropayment systems I can't be bothered re hashing whats allready been said but in my opinion this weeks NTK [ntk.net] put it best :

    "The whole point of a peer-to- peer system is that anyone can swap any file with anyone else - if BMG are going to restrict it to certain approved promo tracks, or run compensatory payment tracking for every file on the system (which'd be fun for bands who are signed to different labels in different territories), they might as well do it with a few industrial strength ftp-sites. And if they don't, they continue to run the risk of copyright actions from, ooh - off the top of our heads, every other record company in the world. And even if the Nap magically chases the *bad* files out of its walled garden, won't the action move to more staid (and more heartily defended) "Napster for workgroups" projects like .NET and Groove? BMG don't seem to have the faintest inkling of how intimately P2P and piracy are interlinked - but, hey, they're a major label, and therefore their job is to waste huge amounts of money on what the kids seem to like. Also, it'll be far funnier to watch, if the Napster/ BMG deal turns out less like AOL buying Netscape, and more like the Sex Pistols signing to EMI."

  • What's to stop you? Exactly the same thing that stopped people from making copies of cassettes for thier friends. In a word, nothing.

    Here's a caveat, though. If you become the sole distributor of large numbers of copies, record companies will come down on your head. Of course, all you need to do is develop/join another P2P group, and put your dl'd, decrypted songs in there. If there is not way to track who contributed the songs, you're safe. As long as there is no central entity (person/company) to go after, the record companies are pretty much screwed.
  • Think about it. You get questionably encoded songs, over unreliable connections that often stick at 'getting info', and half the time the ID3s arent there. However, napster is the best thats out there now. One can grab almost any song by any artist. And listen to it immediately. With no copy protection / nagscreens / etc. For free.

    I will not pay money for Napster. Neither will most people. I will also NEVER PAY FOR SOMETHING COPY PROTECTED. Think about it. Would you pay for a car that would scan the speed limit signs and refuse to go faster? If it was 100% transparent to the user I might consider it. But it isnt. Under current DRM (digital rights management) implementations, files must be 'checked out' when downloading to portables, and you cant play it on the computer until you check it back in. Files copied from one directory to another go dead. Restoring from backups gives you dead files too. And most portables dont even support 'DRManaged' files.

    I would pay $5-10 for a service that would let me download an unlimited number of high quality songs. This would include any song by any artist. These would be in MP3 or the format of my choosing. They would not expire or have any funny coding on them. They would be plain old unprotected MP3s. And I would love this.

    This is what the RIAA should do. It represents all the record companies. So it can get licensing deals with all of them. IMHO this should be its purpose. Encryption exists to be hacked. SDMI will fail. We need ODMI-- Open Digital Music Initiative.

  • YES! (Score:3)

    by bludstone ( 103539 ) on Thursday November 09, 2000 @07:42AM (#634521)
    I agree with the AC. They are making you pay 5$ a month, and not putting ANY hardware costs on their part. They dont have to pay for bandwidth, (limited to napster.com) drivespace, support, or any of the other standard costs that come with an internet based service.

    I WILL NOT pay for a service that doesnt gaurentee a product. I could download an mp3 of "theme to ducktales" and get a recording of a women orgasming (this happened. was very funny)

    im not complaining about this file..

    Im more concerned with the lack of resposibility on the RIAA if they charge for napsters service.

    Wanna make money? fine. spam cd sales on napster, but unless you are going to set up an ftp or something w/ files i KNOW are correct, im not going to pay you a fucking dime.

  • I could be making an ass of myself because I'm not very educated about the subject yet. But I think that kids are a lot of the people who download on napster. Therefore, if charges for Napster are only accepted by credit card, then they probably won't be able to pay the monthly fee. Maybe they think that they will then go out and buy the cd then, but I'm sure there will be some way of swapping mp3's... =)

    -----------------------
    Nothing really matters.
    -----------------------
    Kooop

  • Along with that $5/mo you'll be paying for record companies to control your selection. You won't be able to get songs from lables that don't have an agreement with Napster, to avoid any further copyright problems don't you know... This agreement will turn Napster into mp3now.com.

    I think it'll be a lot harder for Local Band X to get their stuff distributed via Napster. I'll bet you a dollar that it will cost money to get songs into the Napster DB. None of the small local bands I know have money for stuff like that. Corporate Napster will be what free Napster was suposed to stand against.

  • I haven't seen any mention of it on /. but is anyone aware that Strauss Zelnick [bmgentertainment.com] AND Michael Dornemann [bmgentertainment.com] just resigned from BMG on November 5th?

    There's no way that the Napster deal didn't have something to do with that. Dornemann is the number three guy and Zelnick is number four. Both oversee BMG Entertainment. In fact, Dornemann is the Chairman of BMG Entertainment and Zelnick is President and Chief Executive Officer of BMG Entertainment.

    As one record producer I know put it: "It's like God and baby God just resigned."

    I gotta think that the Napster deal and the resignations are somehow related. My guess is that Zelnick and Dornemann didn't move on Napster early enough and probably believed that the future of digital music didn't involve Napster. Middlehoff, meanwhile, knew that to get rid of Napster would be the worst thing that could happen to the labels. (Peer to peer networking without a central server sure does make it more difficult to serve subpoenas.) So I think he made the deal and then removed those who had held up the deal in the past.

  • If they try to do that, I can guarantee that the recording companies will consider it a threat. Paying them a subscription, or $0.25/meg, or whatnot is one thing-- allowing people to trade what the companies consider to be their property is quite another. I won't argue the legality of it, one way or the other, but I don't think that they'll allow Napster to have its cake and eat it too.

    Personally, I prefer Gnutella, and I adore using Scour Exchange. Losing Napster won't be much of a problem for me-- until they try to shut the other file-sharing systems down, of course.

  • You are so stupid you ought to be euthanasized.

    What exactly does this "danger" consist of? That you might accidentally buy a BMG cd?

  • Just like those damn underpants gnomes.....that was way funny! A classic! Now I've got that song stuck in my head.

    OK, now a serious comment. I don't know if Napster even has a business model. I think Sean just wrote a killer app (possibly the killer app), then decided or was convinced to form a company, business model be damned. Then, after they started getting sued, the CEO kind of formed a business model out of the circumstances.

  • In December in fact, and I've been chewing on this subject in my mind a whiel now. Things have changed radically for me in the last few years and behavior/style/attitude-wise music is one that is most obvious. I find that I can't really listen to my old stuff anymore (Priest, Maiden, Sabbath, etc.) or my new-old stuff (Nirvana, NIN, etc.) and I'm not drawn to the new-new stuff. No angst. Dulled anger, or creeping resignation, not sure which. I like house/techo (brain-orgasm first time I heard Crystal Meth), but that's about it as far as newer stuff goes and I can't listen to it very much without getting burned out. I no longer feel the need to have a hammering beat as the soundtrack to my life. In fact it feels wrong and bums me out. The years are freaking flying past now as it is. Music is supposed to be many more things than just an outlet for aggression and depression. I'm now searching for those aspects and find that a solitary violin can my crank a great deal more lately than the vast majority of the teen-crap I've dl'd or bought in the last few years. Mass-media/mass-culture is encouraging us all to remain clueless adolescents for our entire adult lives. Better consumers that way. Looks like I'm maturing regardless though, and my search for understanding and good music continues.

    Enough rambling, it's really a larger topic than might first be imagined, but those of you in the same relative temporal space as me _know_ what I'm talking about...

    LEXX
  • I think the best plan is to allow unlimited downloading for a fee of (apprx) $15/mo. This fee would include one free cd of your choice every month.
  • Of course the point could be made, that NAPSTER guys know no one will use it if it goes to a fee based service. This could be a way for them to get out of their legal troubles, and possibly pick up a large check from the people they have been fighting.
  • I'll just setup an OPENNAP server and avoid such sillyness. When will all the corps. learn that they just can't "buy" a solution?
  • People who like napster for the find-any-music-you-want aspect, won't have this under the agreement. People who like napster for the free music aspect, won't have that. Only people who like the pure convenience of mp3's will find overlap between the new and old services.

    All of these people, and those who aren't yet on the net, do link the brand Napster, with music on the internet.

    That's all they want.

    International branding, especially purely internet based, is rather hard to get.

    Buying it is just so much easier.
  • Oh cool, I work for a member of the 4th reich!!!!
    (Siemens)

  • I buy CDs. I psy for the RIAA tax, I'm just more choosy now.

    Napster isn't any better than bloody IRC channels where it's more effort to get shit than driving to New York.

    Sure they have everything... And eveyone queued up behind them.

    Nothing more painful than waiting for Debbie Does Dallas (the orginal the new one sucks) while 50 56kers are queued up and you're using the 100Mbit college line at #51.

    Now I could buy the original for 20+antiquity tax, which I would since soon enough it's a collectible, but I have no car, no place sells it that I've seen on the net, and I'm not in the mood to keep looking, plus there's no place to keep a vcr and over here EVERYONE WOULD BE TRYING TO BORROW IT. I have a TV card for my amiga 1200 just no place or privacy for the vcr or tapes. I have floormates who type tit in all my IRC windows when I'm in the bathroom.

    Napster may do a favor for artists and yes it's a pretty face on half a century old tools (yes there was networking back then).

    But do I care much about it? No. I care more about the limits of ownership and how producers have more and consumers have less. As if consumers don't produce, and producers don't make remakes.

    Interesting note: People dropped ratios in IRC.
    Maybe they got more uploads then?

    Networked Economics is not going to fit in a sound byte, that's for sure.

  • In the short term, what's most likely to happen is that Napster will become a sort of AOL for music: sanitized, commercialized

    Jon, where have you been lately? Napster has always been heavily commercialized. Could you ever find any obscure bands? Occasionally. Could you always find forty copies of N'Sync's latest POS? Always.

    "Sanitized", you say? If that means the new Napster won't have mp3s with all the skips and blips we've come to hate, then by all means! This further corporate involvement in an already corporate enterprise can only improve the quality of the service.

    Kill Napster and let Gnutella thrive. Kill Gnutella and let its successor rise. Survival of the fittest, may we here surely witness.

  • I'm turning 30 soon.... (Score:3)

    by mini-meme ( 200884 ) on Thursday November 09, 2000 @06:45AM (#634536)
    and will have all the music I'm ever going to enjoy in mp3 format. seriosly, I look around the cubes and all the guys 5-10 years older than me are still listening to Rush! I'm thinking that after a certain point, new music is irrelevent. I will stick with my sonic youth, tom waits and stereolab, my bloody valentine, pumpkins, etc, for a long long time. I have a bunch of single entry albums from a lot of artists too, like garbage 'garbage', nirvana nevermind, portishead 'dummy', on and on.

    enough variety for sure. maybe I need never buy another album already.

  • Re:$5.00 a month might be worth it... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You're right, $5 a month might not be so bad, but I'd bet that if the drooling record company CEO's have their way, they'll figure that they can get the most money charging about $25 a month. What they might do is have various membership types, just like your cell phone. For $5 a month, you could download 10 songs. For $10, you could get 25 per month. If you wanted to get unlimited songs, you might have to pay upwards of $25 each month. That would almost certainly drive a lot of users away from Napster, and subsequently make the service less valuable (fewer users, less selection).

    That's my two cents... ($.02 is what I'd pay for a Napster account)

  • What's to stop me? (Score:3)

    by H3lldr0p ( 40304 ) on Thursday November 09, 2000 @06:46AM (#634538) Homepage
    Okay, fine.

    Let's say that they go thru with this deal, and only the payers get to "keep" their music. What's to stop me, once I have paid for the service, from turning around and giving away copies of music I just dl'ed from them for free? Or for that matter, getting together with a group of other people, pooling our money and buying a subscription.

    Code? I'll make my own player after I exercise my right to backward engineer it.

    Encrypt it? I'll break it myself, make my key for decryption public, or find somebody who already has done one of the first two. Despite what DMCA says, I believe that circumvention of "copy controls" is just as legal as tinkering with own car. (Despite the many, many propritary parts and tools I now need to do that)

    It doesn't matter what they try. People will find ways to make it work for them.
  • There are a couple of good ideas/concepts for paying for the music. Check this one out: www.musicpayment.com
  • Wouldn't you be downright pissed to download a song from Napster to find out that it cut out like 5 seconds from the end (and cmon now, I'm sure its happened to most everybody before)?

    Hell, sometimes I download 3 copies of the same song just because the quality differs so.

    In that respect, micropays would suck.

    Dirk

  • This is precisely the problem that causes old people to be so out of touch with society in the first place.

    Music has never really been my cup of tea mainly because I don't have adequate disk space anyway and no sound hardware but the same principle applies to other things.

    If you limit yourself to music in the past there is a finite ammount you can listen to but if you look at the *entire* ammount of music out there there will always be new stuff.
  • "$5.00 a month might be worth it for the privledge of downloading all the music I want" There is only one problem with that line of thought. The only music they are going to be able to sell is music they own or liscence the rights to (otherwise its still piracy). I can already see each of the major label corp groups trying to start or otherwise aquire something similar to nabster for themselves. (they don't really play well with others) I doubt nabster will even be carrying music from anyone but TimeWarner or its subsidiary labels, and at that it may only be released singles or new and relativly unheard of new bands that the label is trying to push. While it may carry a significant amount of music, its probably not going to be what people expect. lastly, even if they do carry music that you're going to want I can't see a way for them to allow unlimited downloads with out taking a significant kick in arse financily compared to other forms of media.($5 unlimited d/l's over a $12-20 cd?) especialy if they carry liscenced music from other companies. It might end up being a pay for play type system as exists in radio. Either way the chips fall, I wouldn't trust the Bertelsmann(burgermiester) head Thomas Middlehoff any farther then i can throw him, uphill, in to the wind... the guy is a shark of the highest order. "You have a generation that's smart and rich and one that's stupid and poor but delivering the real profit," - Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Middlehoff on the 25 to 30 something generation as quoted in a usa today article. http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/review/crg 608.htm
  • The reason you often see 40 copies of N*Sync crap is that its popular, not because of the commercialization. Granted, the commercialization drove those and thier ilk into the public mainstream, but Napster in no way currently sways a user to download one thing or another. No advirtisments (as yet), but JonKatz's hypothesis would change all that.

    Dirk

  • Never been worried about Siemens Corp stuffing me in a furnace...

    Dirk

  • Well, I must say at very least it will be interesting to see how this proceeds.

    I'm actually a believer that micropayments could work if the system is set up properly and the servicing is executed right. I think we can all agree on one thing here: subscription based or micropayments for downloads, either way is better than paying for a streaming service like the one Universal is testing out right now.

    My vision of the future of music distribution is that a net-based distribution service should be analogous to a record store in the physical world: you should be able to strut in and put any music you want in your shopping cart, go to the register, and cash out (but this time the fee would be very, very minimal since you're not buying physical media). It seems to me that BMG will be the only major label to buy into this Napster bullshizit -- if that's the case, it just won't work. I don't want to go to Napster to get BMG material, XXXserv for Sony's stuff, etc, etc. I want it all at a centralized location. And the way I see it, this is a wonderful promotional tool (allowing a small number of tracks to be donwloaded from each new album for free with publicity information may encourage users to buy the rest of the album).. but that's another topic altogether. There are so many great possibilities here [with digital music distribution] that no one seems to be exploring yet...

    I'd love to get into this game (I actually have a business model worked up even, but no balls to send it anywhere ;)... but... well, there's always a but i guess...

    anyway, my money is on Napster failing unless the rules of the game change. either way this works out nicely for bertelsmann. But i guess we'll have to wait and see...

    Loudwerkz.com : /.-like music news & community!
  • Could you ever find any obscure bands? Occasionally. Could you always find forty copies of N'Sync's latest POS? Always.

    And this is Napster's fault how, exactly?

    Napster doesn't tell people what to make available over their service. The idea from the beginning was to provide a way for people to share what they had and wanted to share. In its own way, it was democratic, in that the more popular artists were going to be found on the service more frequently.

    Ironically, this made obscure bands obscure because they were obscure. You could fill your personal share-space with the highest quality recordings of the best garage-band indy music you ever heard. People who you play it for would instantly fall in love with it. But very few on Napster would know about it because, of course, they wouldn't know to look for it in the first place.

    In that way, I consider Napster a failure because of its fans. mp3.com [mp3.com] at least makes an effort to point people at new kinds of music.

    "Sanitized", you say? If that means the new Napster won't have mp3s with all the skips and blips we've come to hate, then by all means!

    Yes, a fully corporate Napster might have better quality recordings. But then you might end up with other controls too, like prohibiting songs with 'obscene' lyrics and 'unwholesome' ideals. You'll end up with an online music service that's almost Disneyworldesque -- high quality, happy, bright, shiny, and totally intolerant to anything that falls outside the narrow scope of its preferences. What If Woodstock Were Held In Singapore.

    This further corporate involvement in an already corporate enterprise can only improve the quality of the service.

    As a corporate enterprise, Old Napster was almost anarchic, and willing to let users do as they please. They could post music from any source (not counting those pesky copyright problems), and download music from any user who had what they wanted. And they could do it for *free*.

    New Napster will be reorganized, regimented, and improved so that it actually makes money. Guess who it's going to make it from? If not the users paying fees to listen to the music, then from the artists paying fees to make their music available on the networks' play lists. And maybe both, if they're both willing to pay.

    I will agree on one particular point: Napster's time has come. And gone. I look forward to the Next Thing, especially if it's antithetical to big corporate involvement.
    ---
  • Napster has always been heavily commercialized.

    "Commercialized" is not the same thing as "popular". The songs available through Napster reflect the tastes of its users. If you couldn't find obscure bands, it's because Napster users either aren't aware of those bands or don't like them. (Aside from which, I've found that the "no obscure bands" objection is usually made by people who don't actually use Napster much, or don't know how to use it well.)

    The only connection this has to commercialization is that Napster user's tastes are heavily influenced by the marketing done by commercial music promoters. Still, the Napster song collection has an honesty and purity about it that hasn't been seen before: if an old song, or an obscure unmarketed song, appears on Napster, it's not because of marketing but because people actually like that song enough to keep it around and keep listening to it.

    If a corporation steps in and tries to change the way music is made available on a service like Napster, then I agree with Jon: the service will become both sanitized and commercialized, which is unlikely to be an unmitigated improvement.

    I'm a little disturbed that I'm agreeing with Jon Katz, though. I'll schedule a psychological checkup immediately, and write 500 lines of Perl as an antidote/penance.

  • This is the point though, for many people when the free-beer comes out, they forget about the free-speech.

  • Just for Nitpick: They have hardware costs since they'll have to put up reliable database/chat servers and supply the bandwidth.
  • fyi the link to the client software should be http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software /Internet/Clients/File_Sharing/Napster/

    For some reason slashdot's post comment puts a space in the word napster if you post it as a link.
  • Already got it. In fact, the only LM that I don't have that I know of even existing is that Live two shows CD collection thingy. But I have heard it, and it is awesome just like the rest of her stuff.


    Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
  • Um, better check your brain there pal. Look up the thread a bit. Loreena McKennitt is the person we are speaking of. I didn't comment on the Clapton thing though. Totally different style of music. Comparing Blues to Celtic Folk is like comparing Heavy Metal to Church Hymns. Well, maybe not quite that drastic, but you get the idea.


    Slow moving marsupials and the women that love them
  • In my experience, the bigger the media conglomerate, the blander the product. According to the profit-tinted perspective of media corps, safe and simple is an axiom for succesful.

    Consider, for instance, a sampler of Bertelsmann's magazine portfolio in the U.S.

    American Homestyle
    Family Circle
    McCall's
    Parents
    YM

    Sincerely,
    Vergil

  • There will certainly be file-sharing sites, but they will become a fringe, alternative media, existing in small and sparsely-trafficked corners of the Web.

    Isn't that how Napster started?

  • Middlehoff has saved the idea of profitable intellectual property.

    Jon, your hypocrisy is deporable. You make your living with intellectual property. Publish all of your manuscripts online, now, or shut the hell up.

    If I collected your /. writings and sold them for profit, would that be OK with you? When you collect the comments of /. posters and try to sell them in a book you are profiting from IP (even if you give those profits to charity). Can anyone collect and sell in a book with the /. name on the cover? No. Why? Because that name is IP. Don't despise what pays you.

  • AMD is US company (Founded: May 1, 1969 Sunnyvale, California; Headquarters: One AMD Place, P.O. Box 3453, Sunnyvale, CA 94088, 1 800 538-8450), they only have one fab in Germany. Your quote is similar to calling Intel Irish or Malaysian company.

  • Good work Pricewaterhouse Coopers (Score:3)

    by RedX ( 71326 ) <redx@NoSPaM.wideopenwest.com> on Thursday November 09, 2000 @06:59AM (#634557)
    A Pricewaterhouse Coopers survey released to USA Today Friday found that 75 per cent of U.S. music downloaders said they would stop downloading free music if they had to pay.

    Shouldn't that be 100%? It no longer is free (as in beer) music if you have to pay for it, and if you continue to download this music without paying a fee, it technically isn't considered to be free music.

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