Word: napsterizing
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...Napster's college-student users, this pact means several things. First of all, we can expect that sometime in the next few months, all Bertelsmann content (like Santana and Christina Aguilera) will be pulled from the free Napster service and moved to a premium service. Expect to pay between $10 to $25 a month to subscribe. The rest of the songs on Napster will remain free, which leads us to two possible alternatives. Under the first alternative, the record companies will individually put up their own competing subscription sites, which will be so disastrous for everyone that the record companies...
...Napster, as everyone knows, is one neat little program. It took a vexing problem--namely, that the record industry didn't want people to be able to download MP3's, so web users had to search clandestinely for them in the unreliable nooks and crannies of the Internet--and fixed it in an ingenious way. Napster created a service in which users bring their own MP3's together, ready to be indexed by Napster, and then share them with each other. No MP3 song has ever gone through one of the company's servers; instead, they're sent directly from...
...recording industry--the same industry that thought the CD was a bad idea--bitterly opposed all this socialist sharing going on and they slapped Napster with the mother of all lawsuits. Because Napster doesn't host song files, it merely facilitates their transmission, Napster had a pretty strong case. But an unsympathetic judge and the prospect of being tied up in court until the Class of '04 graduates made them want to deal. Bertelsmann, recognizing that in the future, music will be downloaded whether they want it to be or not and, knowing that a recording industry not known...
...better alternative, the scenario which will unlock the discontinuous powers of the Internet for the distribution of all media, would have all music available through one site, for one low subscription cost. Napster, if it negotiates shrewdly with the music industry, is in the best position to provide this service. Yet, they already may have stumbled in this effort, as the Bertelsmann deal--in an arrangement typical of New Economy partnerships--includes provisions for Bertelsmann to make a significant investment in Napster. While on its face the investment option legitimizes Napster, it could create conflicts of interest for the company...
...users of Napster and the customers of the music industry, the stakes are high. The events unfolding now behind courtroom and boardroom doors in California and Germany will be critical in determining whether the music industry can build what Charles Mann has called "the heavenly jukebox." Imagine being able to access the entire library of recorded music--from The Barber of Seville to I'm a Barbie Girl--anywhere, any time and on any device with a speaker and an Internet connection. In the next three years, DSL and cable modems will bring broadband connections as fast as the campus...