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Napster Raises Prices; Tell Me Why You Use Napster Please
Please be aware that we just received word from a Napster user that the Napster service will have a rate increase at the end of this month. The price will be going up 30% from $9.95 to $12.95 but if you act now you can lock-in an exciting annual rate at the $9.95 price! The official memo is below.
I struggle with the reasoning behind why anyone would use Napster in its current form. You don’t own the music, you are just renting it for listening purposes. it can’t be used on the most popular music device today and it’s expensive. With all of the DRM talk lately, it just doesn’t make financial sense to me. Can someone help me understand what the draw is for becoming a Napster subscriber? One theory I’ve heard is that people can easily crack the WMA DRM making it easy to get all the songs you want.
Update: Adam (Ostrow) from Mashable has also posted about the rate increase. He notes, "As someone that sits in front of a computer for the better part of the day, an unlimited streaming plan makes sense for me, since I can listen to as much music as I want."
Uhm, I don’t get it Adam – why not just load up the radio function on iTunes and get all the songs you want all day?
Official memo:
Dear Member,
We wanted to let you know about an important pricing change to your Napster membership.
For the first time in over four years, we are increasing the Napster monthly subscription fee from $9.95 to $12.95. This change will take place beginning on January 30, 2008. As a valued member, we would like to extend a special offer to keep your existing monthly rate.
If you switch to an annual subscription now, you can lock in your existing rate of $9.95 per month. With this special offer, you will be billed $119.40 – a $36 savings over the new monthly rate – for a full year of Napster.
I love having unlimited access to their entire library, and the ability to throw whatever songs I want on up to 3 different devices, for $14.95 per month. I haven’t bought a CD in 2 years!
I can’t imagine buying songs for $.99 each.
You’re thinking of Launchcast, which was excellent… that got swallowed up by Yahoo, and is now a part of their Napster competitor, Yahoo Music Unlimited.
I’m a longtime subscriber of Yahoo’s Unlimited service, which costs me around $5/month (it went up a couple bucks recently though), when you buy a year in advance.
I agree with many of the comments above, but I’ll add the following:
1. It’s not for everyone, but it is great for many.
Some people are happy to only buy one album or a few singles every few months. Their taste in music rarely changes and they’re okay with that.
I happen to have a continuing thirst for more music– with Yahoo, I can queue up Eric Clapton’s entire discography on a whim and give it a whirl without actually paying for each album– the cost of doing this any other way would be the equivalent of several years worth of unlimited subscription fees.
When a friend of mine says “you gotta listen to this artist”, I can have the full album playing in seconds, at no additional cost.
As you can imagine, this also comes in handy when deejaying a party.
So to many people, I think complete freedom to access music on demand is significant– and it’s not to be discounted that the music can be streamed online. I really shouldn’t have to keep music for every occasion on my hard drive, where my Christmas albums languish for 11 months at a time, and my dance music gathers hard drive dust on all but the occasional party day.
2. People get too attached to the short term. Yes, you don’t own the music. But if you buy so much as one album per month, your monthly budget for music consumption for the foreseeable future is at least $12-$15/month.
In one form, you get a single album per month. In another form, you get unlimited access to everything.
I will happily pay <$20 a month, every month, for the rest of my life, if it means I can have unlimited access to everything. This goes for movies, too. Once somebody gets there.
3. You can still count on the old tried-and-true filesharing methods. I have an iPod, but I don’t rotate new music onto it very often, so for my personal needs I’m okay with resorting to old school methods of obtaining music (also note: Yahoo sells these tracks at a discount to Unlimited subscribers).
Again, doesn’t work for everyone, and I can understand why many people would be opposed to this– especially in the DRM-hating world we’re in.
But I think we’re still only beginning to free ourselves from the mentality of buying and owning a physical piece of intellectual property.
Whew– I think I need to start my own blog.
Thanks for the book Tony – btw, you can be a blogger on CN anytime :)
I appreciate the insight about how you use Yahoo music.
…it’s pretty much the same idea as Napster (renting your music, or, as I put it, paying for access to a humungous junkebox).
Why do I do it? It works out to $6, and I can listen (full-length) to songs from zillions of artists, in a ton of different genres. A friend’ll say, hey, I just bought such-and-such album and most often I can pull it up on my Yahoo music service and listen to it without paying an extra cent.
It’s the flexibility, the discovery. Can’t compare this to Internet radio (as much as I really really love, for instance, Pandora); Yahoo and Napster paid services let you grab music on-demand. Oh, and download it (albeit tethered) to my laptop, where I can listen to it on a bus, on a plane, etc., without any internet access.
That’s a hell of a lot of pleasure for such a little fee every month. And before you accuse me of bein’ a Napster or — even funnier — a Yahoo shill, well… I work for Google, okay? :P
Oh, and hey, would I rather the music be unDRM’d and would I *still* continue paying $6 a month? Yes, and yes, without a doubt.
was this called launch or something at one point? i used to listen to it all day at work free years ago i think…
It may not be for everyone, but I can’t think of a better value for my family. Me, my wife, and my teenage kids can all download as much music as we want for one low monthly price. My kids currently download 5-10 songs or more each night. That would add up to a lot on pay-per-song services. I know families that have spent hundreds$$ in a single month supporting their kids download habits :)
And although iPod doesn’t support the file format, there are plenty of other excellent and less expensive alternatives that do.
While it’s true that you don’t own the songs that you stream or download, you can pay $.99 for the songs you want to purchase which allows you to burn them or change the format to whatever you want. And of course, it’s easy enough to rip the DRM wma’s to mp3 anyway.
Considering that I’ve used Napster since it went legal and there hasn’t been a price increase since, I’m not going to whine about the extra $$.
well i will admit that I have software that allows me to record whatever is playing on the computer into an mp3 file. but i’m still not please with the rate increase. There is really no explanation on what they are adding to the service that I would really use. I may cancel, I am undecided.
My wife and I share our napster to go membership. We get all of the music we could ever want for our computer and MP3 players. I use my MP3 player in my car, at work and working out. What else could you ask for for $14.95
You are right – even for 12.x, burning all the music I want still has some value. Not sure how much beyond the rate increase I will go but still affordable.
Looks like a cash-grab. Raising rates may encourage existing users to buy into the annual plan, raising a pretty good lump of capital at one time. For those that don’t take advantage, increased monthly revenues.
As to why people use it? No idea, I’m on a Mac, so it’s not even an option for me.