ZitZot: Napster still alive, price down to $5 a month
Digital music supplier Napster said on Monday it is slashing its monthly subscription price to $5 and adding downloads of songs to its streaming service in a bid to expand its customer base and compete with Apple Inc’s iTunes. It is the latest attempt by Napster to take on iTunes, the dominant digital music leader, and its first major strategic move since being taken over by retailer Best Buy Co Inc last October. Los Angeles-based Napster said users can now get unlimited access to stream music from its library of 7 million songs and five free songs for download every month for a subscription fee of $5.
Previously, Napster had charged subscribers $12.99 for a streaming-only service. Napster will roll out an in-store marketing campaign across Best Buy’s 1,031 stores in the United States. “We’ve worked very closely with our label partners to come up with a re-engineered economic structure that is a win-win for everyone starting with consumers,” said Chris Gorog, Napster’s chief executive.
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Comments(30)
napster used to be amazing in the 90's, what ever happened to it?
Spotify?
ye napster was the first program i started stealin songs lol but now napster is chargin anyways napster come back and be free
For all of you who haven't heard of Spotify. Look it up – it'll change your perception. It's beyond "GOD LIKE!!!"
@ 4
Low bitrate stream-only songs are not "GOD LIKE".
Spotify is pretty god. God like is going a bit far!
Napster in the 90's was an experience thats for sure
The only time you can actually hear the difference between average bitrates and lossless ones is either if you have top notch equipment or play music and nightclub type loudness :S
I can hear bad encoding a mile off. MP3's really are horrible unless you encode them at 200kbps+. You can hear the frequencies cutting off
.
I remember using Napster back in 97. The maker is a freakin genius.
Yeah, it doesn't take a genius to be able to differ between lower bitrates versus higher ones, Dave. I too can tell the difference between different bitrate's, such as 128Kbps, and 192Kbps, and even 256Kbps, and the higher DOES sound better if you have good hearing. I sure as hell don't have any top notch equipment unless you consider a subwoofer from a stereo set from wal-mart for $50, and two speakers from an old $100 CD Player top notch. Then I also have my iPod. I can tell the difference with both of them, and I'm not playing the music loud at all.
i googled spotify, and got a message that it is not available in my country yet.
not available in america?
LOLz.
was there some kind of error?
what an amazing refreshing idea. paying for songs you can download for free?
yeah, ok.
@8 n @10:
how do you guys recognize a difference between e.g. 320kb/s and 192kb/s? I listen to my iPod like 2 hours a day and I honestly don't and never did. Maybe its if you turn it up loud.
@Topic: Napster pretty much started the hype around pirating music, now its just one click hoster sh"t and so on…
And why would you pay 5$ for songs you can't even take with you?
Calm down and get free again! Maybe make money with commercials and then let us leech the sh!t out of our bandwiths
maybe if you listened to the songs on a better mp3 player you'll hear it. ;p
@13
I've honestly never been able to hear the difference, either. sometimes i convert songs to a lower bitrate just to save space on my mp3 player.
spotify: Fail
ppl who are unable to differ from bitrate's: Fail
Thank you very much and have a great one!
"i googled spotify, and got a message that it is not available in my country yet.
not available in america?
LOLz.
was there some kind of error?"
Not all good things start in America. Spotify is Swedish and I understand that they want to build a solid base before going to the wild west. Fantastic software that is going to kill iTunes. Hopefully. Free legal music and not taking any space from my hard disk. Some ads once in hour ofcourse but those last like 30sec. I'm willing to pay 9.99€/month soon. It's that good.
Spotify: Fail
AGREED.
you can pretty much get ANY song you want now online. for Free.
Doesn't matter if Napster goes free with 320kb/s and iTunes raises it's prices and lowers bitrates. These people are loyal to anything with an "i" in front of it. They have iPods, iMacs and talk on iPhones. If Apple made them they'd watch the iChannel on their iTVs and drive iCars no matter how crappy and overpriced they were compared to other products.
@17
You need to practice your craft, that plug was as obvious as they get
Hey, Don't talk bad about Napster!!! Napster started it all. Before torrents and all these P2P programs there was Napster. Growing up in the mid 90's Napster was the first to give us free music. Unfortunately, they got sued and can no longer be the free service they once were. Thank you napster for creating the first generation of online pirates. MUCH LOVE
I'm sorry, what is iTunes?
I am a 29-year old male, I love music and have thousands of songs (also plenty of CD's) and have never, not once in my life, visited this so-called "iTunes".
Paying for CD's, I understand. You pay for something you can feel, put on a shelf and collect. With a CD or an LP or whatever it's not just the music you get… you get the artwork, the booklet, the lyrics (sometimes).
I believe the one true way to go about loving music nowadays and in the future is to:
1. Download music for free
2. Enjoy it wherever and whenever you want. Get interested in the band's work.
3. Tell your friends. Give them the songs or tell them how to get them for free. Get them interested.
4. When prices drop to a reasonable level (under 10 euros, dollars, pounds, etc), buy CD's and collect them. Enjoy the booklets, posters, artwork and the fact you own pieces of music history.
5. Go to concerts. Enjoy paying for tickets, because in a concert the artists WORK and PERFORM for YOU.
6. Tell everyone about how much the concert rocked, get them to download music, get them interested… (repeat steps 1-6)
The "RIAA-approved" method is a bit different:
1. You MUST pay to have access to songs.
2. Your mp3 player, which boasts a capacity of "10.000 songs", has around 8 songs on it, which is the amount of your allowance this week.
3. You sell your 8Gb player and downgrade to a 128Mb version, because you just can't afford that many songs. You buy two more songs and fill up your player.
4. You buy a few more songs (almost as many as there are on the band's CD whick costs a fortune when brand-new) but realize that in order to put them on your mp3 player you must remove the songs that are in memory, sending them to your computer WITHOUT MAKING COPIES, as such is illegal and will get you doing 3 to 5 years.
5. You realize that listening to music is a tremendous hassle and lose interest in said "Band". You turn your adolescent attention to things like drugs, violence or worse: READING.
Nice… Teeboho Mokoana nailed it.
But not an app though.
$5 for a massive database of songs you can download and strip the DRM with Tunebite. And don't have to worry about RIAA and fake files. I'm all over this.
@18:
And after how much hassle?
I can open Spotify and listen to B-sides that would otherwise take AGES to find elsewhere if even possible and for free.
Sure use torrents etc if all you want is modern pop music but otherwise.. good luck finding the tracks.
Bitrate is 160kbps OGG so far from terrible. Great for get togethers too as you can have (almost) anyones favourite music to hand instantly.
$5/mo isn't bad for the Napster deal at all given that you get the free tracks. Shame they want almost 3x that in the UK at £9.95…
Well forget Napster, I started on IRC way back then, and it still owns. Use of a good script and mp3 channel
There's a HUGE difference between mp3s and lossless files.
There's even a big difference between 128Kbps, 256Kbps and 320Kbps.
wow, I guess some people just have better ears than others.
Or maybe they're just listening on laptop speakers or an ipod.
I still have a lot of music I got from Napster before it was shut down. those are mostly low bit rate mp3 though.
Napster really did spread the love back then…You will all see…The Feds will destoy Torrents like they did Napster…and that day will really suck…remember what they said before 'Napster went down?…
@28 remember what they said before 'Napster went down?…
I give, what did they say?
Destroy torrents? They want to break the internet down and rebuild it from the scratch after the pyramid model all the rest of society is based on, no more equality, strictly chain of command, producer, consumer, master, slave. You can see it happening if you just look.