thekingofpain
10-18-2000, 01:09 AM
Out of the latest hubbub surrounding the Napster case came this interesting and overlooked little item: a proposal from the embattled company to charge users a fee of $4.95 per month to use the service. Under the proposal unveiled by Napster's CEO Hank Barry earlier this month, record companies would receive seventy to eighty percent of the royalties -- estimated around the half-billion dollar mark. But would a digital music subscription plan make sense?
In effect, the creation of a Napster subscription club would be like a digital music version of an all you can eat buffet. You give the company your credit card number. They charge you the fee. Then you're free to go on the service to suck down as many songs as you can during a given period of time. There could be permutations -- maybe your five bucks would get you, say, three hours of download time or twenty-five songs. This could be like a 21st century version of Columbia House or BMG record clubs, but with none of the annoying "featured CDs" to mail back.
Would enough users pay? Probably not. My guess is less than half, since they could certainly get the very same songs on other services like Gnutella or even Aimster. Napster, however, has a leg up on the freebee alternatives because of its almighty brand name. A recent cover story in Time magazine sure helps spread the word. As a result, plenty of casual music fans online think Napster is the only way to get music on the Net (trust me on this, I've been taking calls as a guest on radio talk shows around the country lately; one guy even thought Napster was a person! who invented music online!). Other sites are still perceived as too technical and clunky, even though they're just about as easy to use as the big N.
Ultimately, a Napster subscription plan would only succeed if record companies went for it. So far that hasn't happened, and I doubt things will change. Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, made a comment recently that Napster had "not presented something even one company" would find compelling enough to accept. And, really, why would a record company sign on to such a plan?
After all, the major companies would essentially be subsidizing the smaller labels under a Napster subscription. Napster says the plan would be like radio royalty deals. Theoretically, Napster could parse out the revenues according to how many times a record company's songs are downloaded, but then you're looking at Napster essentially becoming an online retailer. Why should a label endorse this when they could set up the exact same kind of interface on their own site and not have to take a crappy seventy percent split? The only way it would work is if every label for every artist on Napster agrees. And the time for that is long gone. Napster has alienated too many artists and labels to ever become part of the fold.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.............
In effect, the creation of a Napster subscription club would be like a digital music version of an all you can eat buffet. You give the company your credit card number. They charge you the fee. Then you're free to go on the service to suck down as many songs as you can during a given period of time. There could be permutations -- maybe your five bucks would get you, say, three hours of download time or twenty-five songs. This could be like a 21st century version of Columbia House or BMG record clubs, but with none of the annoying "featured CDs" to mail back.
Would enough users pay? Probably not. My guess is less than half, since they could certainly get the very same songs on other services like Gnutella or even Aimster. Napster, however, has a leg up on the freebee alternatives because of its almighty brand name. A recent cover story in Time magazine sure helps spread the word. As a result, plenty of casual music fans online think Napster is the only way to get music on the Net (trust me on this, I've been taking calls as a guest on radio talk shows around the country lately; one guy even thought Napster was a person! who invented music online!). Other sites are still perceived as too technical and clunky, even though they're just about as easy to use as the big N.
Ultimately, a Napster subscription plan would only succeed if record companies went for it. So far that hasn't happened, and I doubt things will change. Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, made a comment recently that Napster had "not presented something even one company" would find compelling enough to accept. And, really, why would a record company sign on to such a plan?
After all, the major companies would essentially be subsidizing the smaller labels under a Napster subscription. Napster says the plan would be like radio royalty deals. Theoretically, Napster could parse out the revenues according to how many times a record company's songs are downloaded, but then you're looking at Napster essentially becoming an online retailer. Why should a label endorse this when they could set up the exact same kind of interface on their own site and not have to take a crappy seventy percent split? The only way it would work is if every label for every artist on Napster agrees. And the time for that is long gone. Napster has alienated too many artists and labels to ever become part of the fold.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.............