p2pnet.net News:- Is Napster II finally getting it right?

After years of mis-steps and flops, and buoyed up by massive help from the record label cartel which forced it into universities across the US as a ‘legal’ music downloading service, the disinterred Napster II may have a winner - of sorts.

It’s planning a $30 million marketing campaign, “to lure customers away from Apple Computer Inc.’s successful iTunes Music Store,” says the San Francisco Chronicle.

“At the center of its four-month marketing effort will be Napster-to-Go,” a $15 a month subscription music rental service that, “works with several digital audio players that are trying to knock off Apple’s market-dominating iPods. Napster will release a full version of the service today.”

Ironically, it’ll use Super Bowl 2005.

We say ‘ironically’ because Apple used last year’s Super Bowl – or Sleaze Bowl, as it came to be known – to boost its iTunes iPod loss-leader.

In an incredibly cynical, even for Apple, campaign, it worked with Pepsi and the cartel’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) to use 16 teenagers who’d been pilloried in the RIAA sue ‘em all marketing drive, as advertising foils.

The Napster II ad compares the cost of buying songs at $1 each from iTunes to load into an iPod, with paying $15 a month for access to the Big Music cartel’s offerings, scant as they are compared to what’s available on the p2p networks and indie sites and, “The tag line for the ad is, ‘Do the math’,” says the Chronicle.

Well, OK.

Napster II, Apple and the other corporate music sites all draw from the same almost dry well serviced by the Big Four cartel - EMI (Britain), Sony BMG (Japan, Germany), UMG (France) and last, and perhaps least, Warner (US).

The cartel’s IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industries) recently claimed the corporate online music biz is “flourishing” and has sold 200 million tracks.

The actual figure is more like 250 million made up almost entirely by Apple iTunes sales. The other sites – including Napster II – don’t figure. And even the 250M has been accumulated since 2003 when iTunes kicked of.

In the meanwhile, the average number of users who are on the p2p file sharing networks at any given moment around the world went from 3,847,565 in 2003 to 7,452,184 in November, 2004, says p2p research firm Big Champagne.

And upwards of one billion files are shared each and every month.

Big Music argues this is outright theft. But of course, it isn’t and has never been proved to be so in a court of law. It could, however, perhaps be called fair use.

And the people sharing could be buying. However, in the same way the cartel insists on continuing a ridiculous marketing campaign centred on suing its customers, the cartel charges so much for ‘product’ that the plastic sites as iTunes are virtually forced to sell each low-fidelity, lossy track made from hi-fi originals, for a $1 or more each.

That’s a bald-faced rip-off and most people won’t stand still for it. Hence the raging activity on the p2p networks.

One has to wonder if the cartel’s shareholders all live in caves to allow Big Music to continue to ignore what could, and should, be a vast gold-mine

In the meanwhile, Napster II wants a piece of the Apple pie.

Its new service will be used by the likes of punters who still believe in Kazaa, but there are lots of them – and it desperately needs the business.

But back at the ranch-house …….

JN

Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net

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See:-
lure customers - Napster-to-Go will get a boost with Super Bowl ad, San Francisco Chronicle, February 3, 2005
advertising foils - New Pepsi Apple iTunes ads, p2pnet, January 19, 2005
flourishing - The Digital Music Revolution, p2pnet, January 19, 2005
suing its customers - RIAA nails more people, p2pnet, January 29, 2005

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 3rd, 2005 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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