and Morpheus goes on unscathed!? Anyhow, this sounds kinda lame, read on... Slimmed-down Napster going back online By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY LAS VEGAS — Napster, which revolutionized digital music and rocked the record industry by allowing computer users worldwide to swap songs for free, is back online starting today, for the first time since July. The catch: There's virtually no music available that you've ever heard of, and it's a test run of its new subscription service, with 100,000 songs available to only 20,000 volunteers. Napster, which closed after a series of setbacks in lawsuits brought by record labels and artists, plans to offer 50 downloadable songs for $5 to $10 a month from independent labels such as Vitaminic, Matador and Beggars Banquet. It goes up today "to show the record companies that the technology works and the downloads are secure," said Napster CEO Konrad Hilbers at a Digital Hollywood conference here. The five major labels are still suing Napster for copyright infringement, and Hilbers is still trying to both settle the cases and persuade labels to license their music to the new Napster. He says he's "very confident" that Napster will obtain the licenses; the service already settled with music publishers. Since Napster closed, those record labels have built their own online operations: MusicNet, operated by EMI, BMG and Warner with RealNetworks; and Pressplay, from Sony and Universal. Though neither has revealed subscription numbers, the services have been met with tepid reviews. Napster had agreed to license the MusicNet service, but has changed its mind, Hilbers says, because the labels have been receptive to settlement and licensing discussions: "Why run their system when we have our own?" "We understand Napster is in serious discussions with the record companies," says Amy Weiss of the Recording Industry Association of America. Hilbers says the new Napster will be available widely by April. As with MusicNet and Pressplay, Napster charges a monthly fee for a certain amount of music. But Napster adds instant messaging and chat functions, which were among Napster's most popular features, according to Shawn Fanning, now 21, who created Napster three years ago in his dorm room. The new Napster will offer "stuff people really value, like obscure and live tracks they can't buy on a disc and find anywhere," he says. "That comes from the community. It's a way a lot of people learn about new music, and it doesn't exist in the other services." The money that comes into Napster will be shared with artists and copyright holders. At its peak last February, Napster had 80 million registered users, who downloaded as many as 3 billion songs each month. But GartnerG2 analyst P.J. McNealy says the new Napster doesn't have much of a chance without offering music from the major labels. "The Napster brand isn't enough," he says. "And the value of their brand name has diminished every day."
Why should anyone pay for Napster when Morpheus is free and is a much better service. I know that there are many others too.
I guarantee you the originator of Napster will hope you will use Morpheus. btw oily: Napster and Morpheus are two different technologies. Without getting too technical, Napster was a company who stored the list of mpgs to search through. They didn't story the songs, but did store "links" to them. The important point is that it was a company with machines that named all the songs to download, who could be sued and whose machines could be turned off. Morpheus is not a centralized indexing service...I'm not even sure if Morpheus is a company. It is a downloadable piece of software, that directly connects different machines like chat software does, or AIM, or ICQ. It is like joining a big buddy list. Part of that service is to peer into someones machine to see their list of mpgs. There are no servers containing indexes of music. If you were to sue them, it would be equivalent to suing AIM or ICQ for allowing people to transfer files to each other. Plus, they have a disclaimer Basically, the software you download helps you see other people's machines better, but aside from that, Morpheus does not help you. In technical terms, Morpheus is distributed indexing among all users of the software, whereas Napster was centralized and you logged in to see the community index.
Yeah why would anybody pay for Napster when you can use Morpheus and get music plus videos, software, photos, and documents? Also if you are just looking for music there is also AudioGalaxy which works well too.
Hell no Im not going to pay. You have: Morpheus Audio Galaxy Limewire Aimster Why would anyone want to pay for Napster. It just so happens to be the first and most popular source for downloads. There will always be other ways.
Crispee, that is a wonderful explination and I appreciate the time and effort you put into it. I dont care how I take the trip, just as long as I get to the intended destination and I pay as little as possible. Morpheus and Napster can do whatever it likes in the background but as long as I get the same result and I dont have to pay, I am going to keep using Morpheus. When it stops performing or I have to pay, I will go find something else. There will always be something out there that is free and functional.
Master Baiter, My point was to answer oily's smilie with why Morpheus is unscathed. Morpheus cannot be sued, and they would be fools to charge money, because they will just be replaced. They best they could do is charge $19.99 to buy their software like Netscape used to do. They'd have a freeware version and a licensed version with better feature. download charges would never happen. Only software licenses charges for better software, and still that would be less than a PC game. I suspect AIM and ICQ will eventually move in to replace anyone who attempts to charge for viewing mpg directories on someone's machine.
just out of curiosity. . . when Napster went down, the next download "service" that I found was Bearshare. in the beginning, Bearshare did not have nearly the variety that Napster did, but now I can find most of the music I'm looking for on Bearshare. so here's my question: no one ever mentions Bearshare as being the service they use. are these other ones [morpheus, winmx, etc.] better? is there an advantage to them I don't know about? is there a disadvantage to Bearshare that I should know about? just wondering.
