Napster going DRM-free

They had already been considering it and now it's official -- Napster will be converting its entire downloads catalogue to 100% DRM-free MP3s (innit funny how things come full circle?) in Q2 of this year. With all track and album sales offered exclusively in MP3 format, the company obviously hopes to attract a certain crowd heretofore locked out of its business model. While the subscription service will remain a core focus, Napster execs are surely hoping to see an uptick in their direct download sales when those teeming iPod and iPhone hordes come knocking second quarter.

[mconder @ Feb 6th 2008 7:33PM]

Does anyone know what bitrate the MP3s will be offered in? I have extreme high end head phones and headphone amp and anything less than 256K is completely unacceptable. Yes, I can hear a difference between a 192K and a 320K mp3 file. Get some Sennheiser hd650's or Beyerdynamic 880's and you'll know why I can't have anything less than 256.

[jwtrooper @ Jan 7th 2008 9:11PM]

They ain't givin them away free yet...

[Sean O @ Jan 7th 2008 9:29PM]

"yet" nothing. There will never be subscription based unlimited downloads without DRM. And there will never be DRM-free subscription on-demand streaming. Think for a moment how absurd that would be.

The term "DRM" is getting massively misused on this blog and others. People are calling everything DRM. Next thing you know they'll start calling car alarms DRM.

The "evil" kind of DRM is for purchased music and movie downloads. It should go away and I'm glad it is.

But DRM is great for other things. Subscription service models are a perfect example. DRM is what allows them to exist in the first place, and it allows consumers to use their own computer hardware instead of being stuck with some proprietary device (like a cable box, satellite radio tuner, etc.).

[jay.viz @ Jan 7th 2008 9:39PM]

@Sean O
So if you could scan all the books at your library, you'd never go to the library? What if the library gets new books in? What if your hard drive dies? Wouldn't it be pain in the ass to keep track of all those books? What if you actually like talking to people at the library? Etc...

[Smart People Play Tuba @ Jan 7th 2008 10:45PM]

Dammit . . . I thought it was 1999 again. Curse you, Lars Ulrich!

[Steve @ Jan 7th 2008 10:59PM]

@jay.viz

That's perhaps the worst allegory I've ever seen. Libraries are funded through state or federal governments -- your tax dollars pay for "free" access.

Also, if your local lending library started producing unlimited copies of the books they would provide, they would be sued out of existence.

And finally, of course, you can't scan all the books at the library. If you've been in a library for the past few years, all the copier machines include big posters about what is and what isn't fair use.

[jay.viz @ Jan 8th 2008 9:51AM]

@Steve
Try using your imagination a little.
I'm sure you can find a solution to everything you mentioned.

[ReTRO CLUTCH @ Jan 7th 2008 9:10PM]

So wait. Is the subscription also going to be DRM-free? How would they manage that?

[Miles @ Jan 7th 2008 9:13PM]

iTunes is better.
It's a lot more fair to the artists and it is easier to use.

[Dude @ Jan 7th 2008 9:17PM]

hey you! fanboi!

how can you seriously back that claim up?

and napster is great, not nearly as clunky as other softwares, subscription is a great service too!

[jay.viz @ Jan 7th 2008 9:24PM]

You are not paying artists when you buy from iTunes.
You are paying an electronic delivery service.
The electronic delivery service pays a record label a predetermined amount for how much the song is supposed to be worth.
The record label may or may not be obligated to pay the actual artist of the song any of the money the label collects, ever, for anything.
Most of the time an artist is "promoted" by a label in exchange for copyright ownership of the recording. So no matter how many of those CD's you buy, the artist receives nothing for it. The artist usually makes money by playing concerts and venues.
Radio stations have royalty free use of most label owned music because that is where most of the real promoting is actually done.

[kojo87 @ Jan 7th 2008 9:37PM]

if you really want to support artists go buy the friggin CD in a store like they want you to! downloading a single off iTunes is just saying you dont give a crap about what the artists are getting. buy the album and listen to every song in order.

if Amazon had more music i think it could rival iTunes. i've never used Napster though...

[kojo87 @ Jan 7th 2008 9:43PM]

i'd also like to back up what jay.viz said. artists make most of their money from concerts. everything else is basically advertisement for the concerts. this is why i really dont find anything morally wrong with pirating music. especially if you dont like the label.

there are plenty of artist who don't give a crap if their music is downloaded illegally but their label does.

[ark_v2 @ Jan 7th 2008 10:06PM]

Oh my...are you on drugs?

[AJ in the East Bay @ Jan 7th 2008 10:49PM]

@kojo87: "buy the album and listen to every song in order."

Yes! MP3s have destroyed the music album. It's great to have all of your music in the palm of your hand, but people should do themselves a favor and give albums a listen or two before they start picking it apart.

iTunes and other digital distribution services have based their business on the "I bought this CD and there are only two good songs in it". People don't give songs a chance these days. It's the whole thing about instant gratification. Guess what? You'll get bored quicker with the song you liked right away than the one it took a few listening sessions, if at all. I understand that there are a lot of music CDs out there with really crappy songs, but if you like your artist or want to discover an artist, get the CD or buy all the MP3s in the album. You may find out you like more than you expected.

[Arthur Nonamiss @ Jan 8th 2008 2:36AM]

@AJ

I agree with you in theory. Problem is, in practice the music industry picked up on this a long time ago, and started milking this system. Today, the standard practice is to put 1-2 "hook" songs on an album and make the rest filler. Yes, there are exceptions, but most albums are designed to be sold by a couple songs. In actuality, it's not even a new trend. For example, some of the Beatles' early albums were single albums in the UK, and when they came to the US, they were split up and padded with filler to make more albums. Later on, when they weren't so reliant on the "generosity" of the labels, they got more creative control over their work, and produced some of the best albums ever recorded.

I would say that the greed of the record companies killed the album, not MP3's.

[Michael @ Jan 7th 2008 9:14PM]

Well how is that going to work for subscription content? Is this just for purchasable tracks?

[Blake Bowen @ Jan 7th 2008 9:15PM]

If it really is DRM-free music selling, I may actually start paying for my music again. hmm.

[Flashpoint @ Jan 7th 2008 9:18PM]

NAPSTER might as well be going CLIENT FREE cause I can't imagine how many clients they could possibly snatch away from Itunes, WMP, Realplayer and all the other download sites out there.

I for one welcome Napster's DRM -free environment, not that it makes one damn bit of difference.
#1 Everything that made Napster great was sucked away when they MADE YOU PAY MONEY FOR IT.

#2 I've got LIMEWIRE.

[matt @ Jan 7th 2008 9:31PM]

you've had a full day of enumerating things!

It's progress like this that makes BluRay's mandatory DRM seem like a huge step backwards.

[Darkest Daze @ Jan 8th 2008 12:58AM]

Limewire?

Give me a call when you can't figure out why you keep getting all these pop-ups for wang enlargement. I've always found it funny how I go to someone's house for a virus/spyware clean and 90% of them have a Limewire icon sitting on their desktop.

[Adam K @ Jan 7th 2008 9:20PM]

You guys really don't read the article, do you? "While the subscription service will remain a core focus"... You can't have a subscription service (Unlimited, not eMusic) without DRM. Otherwise, it just wouldn't be worth it for them.

Me, I'm sticking with Napster. The Zune Marketplace isn't quite there yet.

[ReTRO CLUTCH @ Jan 7th 2008 9:57PM]

I would subscribe to an emusic like service where I could download a certain number of tracks per month for a set monthly fee. I know eMusic provides this but it doesn't have a lot of music I would actually get.

[Adam K @ Jan 7th 2008 10:04PM]

Yeah, and eMusic's subscription terms are confusing. I'm actually quite happy with Napster, and the ability to remove its DRM.

[Michael @ Jan 7th 2008 10:16PM]

That was added after

[sk8rpro @ Jan 7th 2008 9:35PM]

Sounds great, but it doesn't sound like it's for me, not until they open up to Mac users.

Neither does Wal-Mart offer their music store to Macs, which doesn't make sense.

[Mark Reeder @ Jan 8th 2008 3:01PM]

Napster does work on the Mac - as of 4.0 (launched in the middle of October), there is a web client that works on Firefox cross platform.

[sk8rpro @ Jan 8th 2008 3:20PM]

Web client? I don't really care for it.

The web client is useless. Does anyone want a player that's browser-only? Whenever I've tried Pandora, Last.FM, and when I accidentally browse outside of the site instead of opening a new window, the music stops.

[Bob @ Jan 7th 2008 9:40PM]

It looks like 2008 could be the year of DRM-free, lots of big news from Amazon, Yahoo Music, Sony, and Napster:

http://www.techconsumer.com/2008/01/07/get-ready-for-drm-free-2008-amazon-napster-sony-yahoo-music/

[Tim @ Jan 8th 2008 10:17AM]

Wasn't the music industry pissed off at Steve Jobs about a yar ago for suggesting that they sell DRM free music??? Now it seems to be the way everyone is going...

[abadtooth @ Jan 8th 2008 12:25AM]

People are finally getting fed up with DRM's because they are a ridicules!
The only people who were outraged at the thought of dropping DRM's were the people with there pockets being lined, now it's either drop the DRM's or die.

[Spoogy @ Jan 8th 2008 2:02PM]

tThe mp3 device is slowly moving from a stand alone to the cell phone. You can see this in the iPhone, several Samsung phones, Motorola, etc etc.

And what's going to happen when a full migration from mp3 player to mp3 enabled cell phone occurs?

Apple is going to go from having an 80%+ hold on the mp3 device (iPod) to less than 10% hold (iPhone vs. every other cell phone company) and suddenly, iTunes DRM won't work on the vast majority of devices out there.

So when Jobs says he doesn't want DRM, he's really saying that he wants people to be able to stick with iTunes no matter what device they have, even if the future device of choice isn't Apple branded.

Cheers.

[ED @ Jan 7th 2008 10:08PM]

"YOU'LL NEVER SHUT DOWN THE REAL NAPSTER"
awesome movie

[Reginald @ Jan 8th 2008 2:27AM]

Damn. And I was just about to cancel my Napster subscription and go to Rhapsody.

Napster just raised their monthly rates from $9.95 to $12.95. I guess I'll wait and see. MP3 would be nice though. I get tired of stripping the DRM protection off my songs so my wife can listen to them on her iPod.

[jivetrky @ Jan 8th 2008 3:11AM]

So you can strip the DRM off of the subscription based music? So $12.95 for a full library of music?

[Spoogy @ Jan 8th 2008 1:54PM]

Go with Rhapsody only if you want huge blocks of service outages. Do a search on this site and you'll see all kinds of Rhapsody complaints about 3 weeks ago - it's a

Napster is the way to go - I could either spend $13 for all the music (encoded and labeled properly) I can handle at Napster or 1 album at iTunes.

Or I could use Limewire, download some grainy mp3 that Leroy Jenkins encoded in his trailer out in the woods then labeled as Kate Nash when it's really some whack Japanische Kampfhorspiele. NO THANK YOU.

I want my music when I want it and would rather be spending my time listening to something new INSTEAD of hunting down the correct mp3 with some spyware loaded program.