| Author | Message | ||
     Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 324 Registered: 05-2005 |
Kevin, you've mentioned Napster on here a few times. How does it work? I know you pay 10 pounds a months or something and can download 10,000 songs. But what happens if you cancel the subscription? Do the songs self-destruct after a month or something? What if you have put the songs onto a portable device? How do they suddenly stop working? | ||
| kevin Member Username: Kevin Post Number: 386 Registered: 05-2005 |
Padraig, I pay £9.95 per month. This allows me to download absolutely everything they have, there are no limits apart from will your hard drive be able to store it all! For an extra £5 per month you can sync this stuff to your MP3 player, but this must be a Napster compatible device. The drawback here is that you cannot burn this stuff to CD as part of your monthly subscription. To do that you must pay what they charge for the album in question. From what I can see the average price is £6.95. I think all this is controlled by something called DRM, not got a clue how it works but I think it expires after a month, so if you cancelled the license is invalid and the songs somehow disappear(or something like that). This also applies to your portable device apparently. What I am doing is effectively renting the songs each month - hope this makes sense | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 327 Registered: 05-2005 |
Thanks Kevin. I understand how DRM works on the computer but having it inbuilt to make the songs unplayable on a portable device is a tricky proposition. I suppose one must connect it to the computer once a month and Napster sends it a signal to say you've paid and you continue to play the songs for another four weeks. Big Brother really is watching. | ||
| kevin Member Username: Kevin Post Number: 387 Registered: 05-2005 |
Yes Padraig, what you say about the portable device rings a bell. By the way you are going to go to the burny fire. Your last 2 posts have been Off Topic, but you have, for your sins, placed them in GO-Bs chat shock horror  | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 329 Registered: 05-2005 |
Oh! I noticed they were in the Go-Bs chat section but I did not know we had to voluntarily put them into the Off Topic section. Never mind, big brother Jonathan is watching and will move them. | ||
| Eke Member Username: Ekewebb Post Number: 64 Registered: 05-2005 |
I have a friend with a Napster subscription who also has an iPod, not a Napster-friendly device apparently. He also has some freely downloadable software that trawls through his Napster files and converts them to mp3, in the process removing the constraints on the files that would prevent them being playable should he stop his subscription, so he can play them on his iPod. His justification, quite correctly I think, is that Napster and iPod should be talking to each other and why should he buy new hardware? Should he ever stop his subscription it'll be interesting to see if he voluntarily deletes all those files... | ||
| Eke Member Username: Ekewebb Post Number: 65 Registered: 05-2005 |
Oh, and by the way Pádraig, if you have your device loaded with files and your subscription expires, the files will continue to play until you next connect your player to your computer. | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 279 Registered: 08-2004 |
There's always a way around it. Thankfully somebody somewhere comes up with free programs for such industry security measures. Quite how much artists get from the napster subscription service is unknown. Somebody somewhere is losing out. EMI download sales have more than doubled in the last year, but it's still only 5.5% of sales. The average punter wants something he can hold in his hand, with a booklet detailing how much weight that fat c. Williams has lost. | ||
| kevin Member Username: Kevin Post Number: 392 Registered: 05-2005 |
Thats an interesting point about how much the artists make Jerry. For the life of me, I cant figure out how Napster can justify giving me all this music(and believe me I download tons of tracks every month) for what is effectively the price of 1 CD in the UK. I know I dont own the music, but until somebody comes up with something even better I can see me persisting with this arrangement for a very long time. I will still buy CDs every so often, ones that I consider to be "keepers", such as the latest from Flaming Lips,Morrissey, DBTs etc but this probably means I will only buy a couple of albums a month instead of anything between 10 and 20. The beauty of this is that this is effectively a very high quality preview service and if you decide an album you have downloaded is actually a "keeper" you go out and but it. Albums that I would have bought recently before subscribing to Napster and which I now "rent" fom them include the latest efforts from Graham Coxon Calexico Willard Grant Conspiracy Fiery Furnaces Liars Massive Attack Mogwai Robert Pollard Secret Machines My bank manager must think I have been on some kind of money management scheme recently |