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February 07, 2005
A funny thing happened during the Super Bowl...
I was knee deep in a case of Sam Adams in an early celebration for a Pats victory last night when the Napster To Go commercial came on. Before the commercial could even finish I was cursing up a storm about what a retarded concept 'renting' your music is... when suddenly someone said, "It's just like satellite radio!"
(music stops, crowd silences, women whisk children away)
At the time of the comment, I simply shrugged it off and got distracted by all the action. But the comparison of the Napster To Go service to Satellite Radio is a ridiculous one.
First off, is the convenience factor. With NTG I still need to sit down and take the time to download all the music onto my compatible player. I also need to poke around for the type of music I want to listen to. I'm essentially tied to my computer if I want to update anything. Satellite Radio? I just dial in, and sit back. All the work is done for me.
Ok, what about the control factor? With NTG you have complete control right! Not really. You don't get anymore control than Satellite Radio. Want to burn a CD from the music you just heard? Nope sorry. Subscribers still have to use to use the pay-per-download servide to burn an audio CD. Plus with NTG I don't all the other content like talk/comedy/entertainment. If on a whim I want to listen to comedy, I'd have to go back to my computer and hook in to NTG. So I actually have less control.
And before you naysayers bust in with your Netflix comparison, think for a second. Music = 5 minutes each. Movies = 2 hours. The format is different, the industry is different, and attention span of a listener over a watcher is just a little different. You can't just add up business models and hope they'll stick (though that's exactly what Napster is doing).
So what's the benefit of Napster To Go? Nothing. It's a piece of crap, and damnit I'm offended someone even compared the two. What's your thoughts? Love it? Hate it? Think Napster is the coolest thing ever?
February 7, 2005 02:05 PM
Comments
Yeah, it did make me pause for a second to wonder if this is competition for Sat radio. I pretty much agree with you though. Variety, ease of use, talk shows all help to make sat rad more entertaining than napster.
I won't say the Napster thing is all that bad though. I have used the free trial of it and thought it was pretty cool. It would be great if sat rad provided a service like napster in addition to the streams. Now that would really rock.
Combine the two services at the same subscription cost (or raise it a few dollars) and you have the greatest service imaginable with todays technology. Who wouldn't buy into that???
Posted by: Monmin at February 7, 2005 09:55 PM
Yeah, I would also have to agree, $15 dollars a month seems pretty high to me, compared with the ten bucks I pay for XM, I can download a brand new O & A show, or other types of music everyday! But it would be cool to be able to burn my music onto a disks, maybe that's in the near future.
Posted by: vic at February 8, 2005 12:57 PM
