As the latest Napster ads splashed across the Super-Bowl-Mega-Ad-Show last night, some of us commented, "Hey, that just might work!"
Now, the ads weren’t anyway as sexy as the iTunes/Pepsi ones but the ads simply claim that it should cost the $10K to fill an iPod with iTunes but with Napster you can fill a variety of (other) music players for just $15 bucks a month. Anybody who has subscribed/played with Real Rhapsody should get the gist pretty quickly, but for you other’s here’s the idea:
Not everyone wants to own every track they listen to forever. Sometimes you just want to play a track that hits the right note at the right moment. A track that would never normally be in your music collection: when the sun’s shining on sunday morning, when you’re packing to go off on your holidays, when you’ve got all your old Univeristy friends around for a reunion.
Do you really want to pay a buck for each track then? (Or drink a lot of Pepsi and get lucky)
Or do you just want the freedom to be DJ for the moment?
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Sorry. The ads sucked, music lovers do want to own their music, and this campaign is DOA. Apple has been pretty right on so far with iPod and iTunes and I don’t think a subscription service from an old brand is going to knock them off stride. If people want to listen to hit songs for a short time or oldies for a class reunion they can do it for free. It’s called radio!
February 7th, 2005 at 2:45 pm
Yeah, but how about the math advertisement that they forgot to show you.
http://thomashawk.com/2005/02/do-math.html
February 8th, 2005 at 5:08 pm
John, I disagree with you. The one thing iPod shows us is that people want control.
On a lighter note:
Turning Napster’s 14 day free trial into 252 full 80 minute CDs of free music
http://blog.kordix.com/marv/archives/000400.html
February 14th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
From Jupiter Research today:
At this point, it looks like competitors could attack from the following positions:
- Price. No one’s got a $100, reasonable-capacity (2GB-4GB) model.
- Video. No real demand.
- Music Phone. Niche product; wouldn’t cut into dedicated MP3 player sales, but might be a handset differentiator. Many, many hurdles here.
- Subscription Service Support. Again, a niche opportunity, at least initially. But probably the best opportunity.
http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/card/archives/006649.html
February 24th, 2005 at 11:30 am
“Rob Glaser, CEO of RealNetworks, last year likened the iPod to a vestige of Soviet communism. At the iHollywood Forum Digital Living Room conference taking place in San Mateo, Calif., today, he called the Mac maker deceptive for not explicitly telling customers that iTunes songs can’t be transferred easily to other devices.
“It doesn’t say anywhere that you have to go through 57 different hoops to play a song on a different device,” Glaser said.
He also added that Jobs, one day, will have to think in terms of subscriptions (like Real), rather than selling individual songs.”
http://news.com.com/Glaser-Jobs+battle+continues/2061-1027_3-5603019.html?part=rss&tag=5602629
March 8th, 2005 at 12:16 am