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Steve Jobs doesn’t believe in tethered music subscriptions, which have traditionally required MP3 players to include a secure clock that kills playback rights when a subscription lapses. Thus, the dominant iPod has always lacked support for such subscriptions, which has hamstrung Napster and other music subscription services.
What do you do if your product doesn’t work on the dominant hardware 0f the day? The answer, according to Best Buy (which scooped up Napster for $121 million last fall), is to bend the music subscription in such a way that it gets along with the iPod and iPhone — sort of.
The new Napster subscription, which launches tonight, allows users to stream any of Napster’s seven million-plus songs to a computer for $5/month. In order to bridge the gap to the iPod, Napster will give subscribers up to five free downloads each month.
Compared to buying five songs per month from iTunes, Napster’s new offering represents a fantastic value. You pay approximately the same price for the songs, plus you get get on-demand streams of everything else, for free — something that Apple does not allow.
The problem is, a number of sites already offer free streams of the same music. Napster now finds itself wedged between iTunes and free, ad-supported services such as imeem and MySpace:
|
Apple iTunes |
Best Buy Napster |
imeem |
|
|
Web streaming |
No |
Any song free up to 3 listens; $5/month for unlimited listening |
Free with registration |
|
Downloads |
$0.69-$1.29 |
5 free songs with subscription, then $0.69-$1.29 |
No |
|
iPhone streaming |
No |
No |
Free interactive radio; stream 100 uploads for free; 80GB for $100 |
|
Embedding songs/playlists online |
No |
Unknown (asked Napster spokeswoman) |
Free |
For now, consumers will likely continue to prefer iTunes for paid downloads and imeem, MySpace or another free option for sampling free songs.
But if the advertising market continues to flounder, imeem and MySpace (both of which are reportedly struggling to offer free services) could be forced to start charging monthly fees for unlimited streaming. If that happens, the market could become level enough for Napster to approach mainstream relevance for the first time since its origin as an unlicensed P2P service.
Napster has attempted to reinvent itself more time than we can count, failing to make a dent on music fans’ collective consciousness. The success of this latest move rests on how the company approaches burgeoning smartphone platforms.
If Napster’s $5/month on-demand subscription includes a mobile app for iPhone, Android, Palm Pre and Windows Mobile, it could become quite the attractive option. That way, Napster could finally succeed in implementing a music subscription on Apple’s hardware (and elsewhere) without relying on Microsoft’s onerous DRM.
Such plans are unclear at this time.
We asked Napster CEO Chris Gorog about the possibility of moving this subscription to the mobile space on Monday morning. He pointed to the company’s partnership with AT&T, which involves charging fans up to $2 per mobile download on top of data charges — hardly the sort of offering fans are likely to flock to.
As for an iPhone app that might sync up with this $5 subscription, he implied that the company is entertaining the possibility. “Napster is constantly looking at ways to extend the Napster service to other platforms and customer touch points,” he responded, “including alternate mobile platforms.”
See Also:
- Imeem: Store Music in the Cloud, Access It on the iPhone
- Imeem Not Closing, Though It Wants New Label Deals
- Screwed for Sure
- Napster’s New Platform, DRM-free Music to Save Subscriptions
- Napster, AT&T Partner for Mobile Music Downloads
- YouTube: A Napster for Our Time?
- Why File Sharing Will Save Hollywood, Music
Source: Eliot Van Buskirk
