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Napster takes aim at the iPod

3 February 2005 1:07 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 4 comments

Napster has unveiled a new portable version of its music subscription service, which takes aim at Apple Computer's portable iPod music player. The company are backing their new service with a $30 million ad campaign. The campaign includes a Super Bowl television spot that urges consumers to compare spending $10,000 for 10,000 songs to fill their iPods or paying a $15 a month fee to carry songs from a catalogue of over a million tracks on Napster-compatible players. This $30 million campaign came as a shock to some analysts as $30 million accounts 70% of what Napster were expected to spend on a full year of marketing.

While $30 million sounds like a massive amount of money to spend on promoting their new service and slamming the iPod, Apple has already spent a lot more. "Apple has spent roughly a hundred million dollars or possibly twice that much to market iTunes and iPods. Now, Napster is stepping up to the plate," said analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group. If there is one part of music download services that is discouraging to consumers it's the lack of ability to store your purchased music on a portable digital music player. Customers who have purchased an iPod can store songs purchased from the Apple iTunes music store on their iPods however, but is it really fair that if you purchase an iTunes track for 99c that you must get an iPod to be able to carry it around with you?

Chris Gorog, Napster's chief executive, said the company hoped to convince consumers that pay-for-download services were more expensive and antiquate by comparison with Napster's subscription model. "I think there's no question that the companies emerging as owning the top market share in this business are spending on marketing," he said. New DRM software from Microsoft called Janus is believed to be the answer for users complaining about not being able to take their music with them beyond their personal computers. It will be interesting to see how much of a success Napster's new service will be, and whether or not they can damage Apple's current dominance in the portable music player marker and online music downloading services.

Source:
Reuters

Permalink to this article

Microsoft considering a subscription-based music service (14 June 2005)

Negativland iPod auction challenging Apple (1 March 2005)

Legal download prices to rise? (28 February 2005)

MP3 players headed for mainstream (18 February 2005)

Napster denies its music has been hacked (18 February 2005)

Napster awarded Super Bore title (7 February 2005)

Microsoft employees love the iPod! (2 February 2005)

MP3Tunes: A DRM-less music store (2 February 2005)

250 million songs sold via iTunes (24 January 2005)

Napster drops its UK prices to match iTunes (13 January 2005)

Roxio is now officially Napster (5 January 2005)

Napster UK now offering 1 million tracks (26 November 2004)

Napster and Blockbuster team up (23 November 2004)

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Discuss this article!
punx777 (Senior Member) 3 February 2005 3:34
i remember when napster was cool :) [ + quote]
scott2453 (Inactive) 3 February 2005 12:13
yeah those were the good old days... [ + quote]
Pop_Smith (Senior Member) 3 February 2005 15:24
lol, if Metalica (or whoever it was) didn't sue Napster, then the P2P world be not as far as it is today. The suing, if you think about it, opened the door for P2P. I think they should reverse the court ruling and let Napster go back to there OLD (very old, lol) self. [ + quote]
blackimp (Newbie) 4 February 2005 8:23
RENT your music per month? How silly is that?! I don't get to listen to it unless I continue my "subscription", and then I have to pay for it each time I play it, no physical disc or file, just streamed. If this thing is accepted by ONE person, the gates will be open and a new and dangerous precedent will be set. [ + quote]