While several Universities have taken on Napster in an aim to provide a legal alternative to file sharing for students, according to a survey conducted at the University of Rochester, not a single student admitted purchasing a song through Napster during the Fall Semester of 2004. This is a big disappointment for Napster, considering 1% of students purchased music from Napster during the Spring Semester of 2004. As a result, Napster has reported a $24 million loss during the 4th Quarter 2004.
What makes matters worse for Napster is that 8% of students have indeed purchased music from online rivals such as iTunes and MusicMatch. Then again, 47% of students have streamed music through Napster, while another 39% downloaded music through its standard service, which expire once they leave college. A whopping 56% of students use other services, even though they know about Napster. Many complain about the DRM policies, Windows-only limitation or simply prefer returning back to restriction-less P2P services. If you copy, please show appreciation by linking back to CDFreaks.
Besides the DRM restrictions and OS limitation, students are also complaining about Napster not allowing the schools to reveal the Napster programme's costs to students, despite part of the student's activities fee being allocated for Napster. The overall estimated cost of the Napster programme for the University is believed to be just under $40,000, partly paid for by an unidentified sponsor (likely the RIAA). This pricing is expected to raise a significant amount once the trial periods are up.
|
Not a single University of Rochester student admitted to buying a song via Napster during the Fall 2004 semester. Instead, eight per cent of the students turned to the likes of iTunes and Musicmatch to buy songs they enjoy. That's an ominous sign for a company spending millions to seed the university market with music in the hopes of unseating Apple as the clear leader in online music. Most troubling for Napster, things don't appear to be improving on the music purchase front. During the Spring 2004 semester, a whopping 1 per cent of students did buy tracks off the Nap. Now no one does. The situation worsens with Napster's small number of specialty "buy only" songs not included with its standard service. Two per cent of students purchased such tracks from Napster, while 39 per cent turned to rival services to secure their songs. The full rather lengthy article can be read here. |
As the iPod is the market leader with over half the market share
for flash players and around a 90% market share for HDD based players, it is not surprising that students are turning away from Napster if they cannot carry their downloaded music on their iPod, whether they download or purchase music through the Napster service. What likely happens is that students will sample music from Napster, but purchase it from iTunes instead in order to carry their purchased music with them.
In my opinion, students should be entitled to know how much of their activities fee is going out to Napster. I would not be surprised if students are boycotting Napster by refusing to purchase music as a result of this policy.
Feel free to discuss about Napster and other online music services on our Music Download, Peer to Peer (P2P) & Legal Issues.
Source: The Register
