Apple rivals claim that they have developed a better solution: Offer subscription services that will allow you access to the entire music database. In addition, Micro$oft has developed a copy-protection format that allows the user to transfer a set number of songs from Napster or Yahoos' database to a portable unit, such as an MP3 audio player, for an additional fee over and on top of the subscription fees. Furthermore, it has been determined that only a handful of portable audio devices are compatible with the Napster subscription service.
In contrast, Napster is claiming that a one-year subscription to their music database would cost $180, and consumers could essentially fill their digital music player with 10,000 songs at a fraction of the price the Apple Music Store is currently offering. There is a hitch though, in order to transfer a song to a portable music, it costs an extra dollar a song. All of a sudden, this doesn't sound like such a good deal after all.
Enter Micro$ofts' new copy-protection software. They are suggesting for $5 per month, that consumers could transfer Napster's entire catalog to their portable music player and listen as often as they like -- as long as they continue to subscribe.
So does this sound like a winning model to knock Apple off the top of the digital music heap? To me, this sounds like a lousy deal for many reasons. There are many facets to this model that don't sit well with me.
- Nobody in their right mind would spend $10,000 filling their iPod (or other digital music player) with music. Apple's adversaries are using faulty ammunition to attack their rival. They are using the assumption that us consumers are stupid enough to believe the only way we can put music on our iPods is by downloading them from the iTunes Music Store. This is simply not true. People can encode their entire CD collection, or even download files from peer-to-peer networks. Sure, millions of people download from the iTunes Music Store. Millions more resort to less legal methods. Audiophiles like me continue to purchase CD's (pawn shops have great bargains), and listen to music on our iPod that we legitimately own.
- The 40-gigabyte iPod is a high-capacity model, which is aimed at a target audience: Audiophiles and computer geeks. Audiophiles often can't stand listening to compressed music, which means that they will be listening to uncompressed audio. A 40-gigabyte iPod will only hold about 1000 songs on uncompressed audio. Can you buy uncompressed audio from the iTunes Music Store, Napster, or MusicMatch (Yahoos' music database)? Not last I checked.
Furthermore, computer geeks find uses for iPods other than storing their music collections. It makes a great portable hard drive. More often than not, I am reading about computer technicians installing operating systems and other diagnostic tools on their iPods. In essence, they've created portable, bootable hard drives so they can repair downed computers on the fly. Others are using their iPods as backup drives, to store valuable information.
The smaller 4-gigabyte iPod Minis are the models that are aimed at the consumer market. Most people don't have large music collections, and a model that has a 1000 song capacity is ideal for them. [ed. note: I must apologize for this rant, it obviously has nothing to do with debunking Napsters' allegations.] - I would expect that most people would purchase between a dozen and a hundred songs per year from a music download service. Conversely, I cannot fathom how I could possibly listen to 10,000 songs in a year. That's almost 40,000 minutes of non-stop music. In other words, that's nearly an entire month of music, 24 hours a day, seven days a week! I have a hard enough time managing an iTunes library of 2500 songs.
- Most importantly, consumers like to own their music. Napster and MusicMatch are offering subscription services which basically allow the user to license music from their database. I would be weary to say that they even allow you to download the music to your computer. It is likely that the music is just streamed to your computer (I really don't know how they manage this as I never have subscribed). I refuse to pay a fee for any music service that only allows me to listen but not own. Apple offers anyone to preview music on their iTunes Music Store for free. Furthermore, what happens when you do not renew your subscription fee to Napster? Do they send you an email stating "Your subscription has expired. Please delete all songs licensed by us from your hard drive". Not likely. This is further evidence that music from these stores are likely streamed to your computer, which brings me to my next point.
- Micro$ofts' new copy-protection music format would have to include some sort of self-destruction device, that the song file would corrupt itself once a consumer's subscription was not renewed. You know as well as I do that hackers are attracted to copy-protected software like vultures are attracted to carrion. Someone will crack the code. Anti-copying codecs aren't much of a deterrent anymore; neither is the threat of legal action. Finally, charging an additional fee for this (over and on top of Napsters' subscription fees) is nothing short of robbery.
- Subscription fees of $9.95 per month might seem like a good deal, but how can Napster manage to generate a profit from such low fees? Royalty fees for record companies are astronomical. If you pay for a CD in a music store, the artist you've supported may see one dollar of that $20 you paid. Half of what you paid goes to the store you bought music from, the rest is monopolized by the record company, manufacturing companies, and management firms. You better believe that these same companies are getting a share from every song you download from an on-line retailer like iTunes. The artist you supported is making no more than a few pennies from every downloaded song. Conversely, in order to keep prices competitive, Napster, iTunes and MusicMatch have to cut their overhead. Apple is only making a few pennies for every song downloaded from their store.
In order for a subscription service like Napster to work, they would have to have tens of millions of subscribers. No record company is going to let digital music sit on a server and wait to be downloaded. Those record executives have been paid already. Unless Napster can entice ten million music enthusiasts to switch, and happily pay their license fees, their music service will tank -- and when it tanks, there will be many unhappy subscribers who have lost access to their favorite tunes.
