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POLL: Would You Pay $4.95/Month for Napster???

No way man, I think it should be free. The musicians should make their money on touring and promotions. We shouldn't have to pay some record company executive to listen to the music we want to. :Q

(thats my story and I'm sticken to it 😛
 
Yes, but not for every month of the year. I'd just use it once or twice a year and download like mad.

And yes, I know I'm cheap.

PH
😀
 
I rather pay directly to the musician than thru napster -> record company -> musician.

One more thing, we can go back using search engines and download thru FTP. Tedious, yes.
 
Reasons why I would not want to:
  1. If people are forced to pay, they will go elsewhere. That means less people to get songs from, and so those that do pay are getting screwed over with less quality songs.
  2. Quality of songs: Napster cannot guaruntee that the songs I download are encoded perfectly. I do not want to pay for crap.
  3. $4.95/month? I already have plenty of bills to pay, but thanks anyway. Maybe $10-$20/year would be tolerable to the general population. See #1.
  4. Musicians will never see a dime of this money. The new "Napster Service" will give this money to the record labels, who in turn will buy a bigger house, car, etc. Musicians are getting screwed enough as it is; let them get the money.
While it has a chance of working in a way that everyone will be somewhat satisfied, there's too many variables to truly make it work. But who knows.....
 
I would pay but now that I think about it. It cant work. Are they going to make it exclusive to those big 5 labels music library? There are a lot of songs that I download from napster that are not under a record label. For example different dj mixes of trance songs and classical music.
 
I woudl pay that to use it if it is in it's current form. The problem is I think Digobick has a point,, many people will not be using it anymore and you may NOT be able to get everything you want.
 
Hell, I'd pay $5 a month, that isn't bad for like 100 songs a month and all different ones off all different albums, think of the savings!
 
Napster this, Napster that.... don't any kids of know of FTP? 80% of my collection was through FTP. After that there is still ICQ, AIM, and IRC.

Windogg
 
I won't point fingers and call people cheap - because I use napster habitually and have not bought a CD in years - but I would without hesitation pay $4.95/month for Napster. I feel a bit of guilt not paying the musicians - just not enough to foot the $20 bill for a CD.

I would rather have them take a percentage depending on which songs of theirs are used though...unfortunately given scour and other competitors paying for napster would get other people not using it and then it would be less useful than it currently is.

I do not understand people who are unwilling to give the artists _any_ money though. It is stealing and Zilldian don't try and pretend otherwise. I agree that executives are getting too much but requiring artists to make their only money through promotions and touring is not right.

Once there is a cheap alternative to _stealing music_ then many people, myself included, would not object to paying a small fee to keep it legally and morally right. $20/CD is more than my morals are worth 😉
 
I wouldn't care. Recently I tried looking for some MP3s through websites and I couldn't find a thing (except broken links) - to me Napster is a godsend
 
People who say you can get over FTP and irc/icq etc. are right - I used these for two years before trying Napster but they are a real pain in the butt compared to the ease of use of napster, and for that i'd pay.
 
If I don't have to download from other people, yes. No reason I should pay Napster to download from another user. 🙂
 
illkid

Why? If you use a dating service do you pay them everytime you have sex with the person you got setup with? No, you pay them to join you two together - Napster is no different. It is a service which requires effort, time, and money. I don't think a penny of the $5 should go to them because they are able to do fine already with advertising and what not.
 
I dunno about you guys, but my Linux Napster client (gnapster) can connect to OpenNap servers, so what happens to the 'official' server is meaningless.
 
My question is whether after all the OTHER companies get in and negotiate, whether it will still be 4.95. Or will Time Warner want 9.95 just for their part of the music world? Death row records, another 2.00, etc. etc. etc.


by the time it's done... more than I pay for cablemodem... no thanks
 
Finally a good debate. You read all the drivelof the ZD-net replies and shake your head. Biggest thing is why should I pay to share my HD. Your not, your paying to use napster. The next thing they spout off is I'll just switch to Cute MX or Scour or Gnutella or opennap. Then why don't they ? Cause Napster so far is the most reliable and easy to use despite dropped connections etc.
Personally I'd only subscribe in the winter when I'm on my PC more, I feel a lot of people will stay cause most users aren't too sofisticated and LOVE the conveinience of napster.
I want the industry to get some cash back and this is progress to digital distribution.
 
I'd pay $5/month for the service. That's still cheap for entertainment. Look at it in another light. You can buy a movie for $10-15, rent it for $3 or pay cable $50/month for entertainment in which most of you probably record the movie on HBO to a video cassette. What is truly the difference between subscribing to cable for your movie entertainment or subscribing to Napster for your music entertainment. Yes, the record companies will reap profits, but so will Napster. Profits will trickle into better developments and quality of the software. Plus, $5/month is not bad for unlimited downloads of music. %60/year. How many CDs can you buy for $60/year??????
 
If those 5/month actually went to something the artists could benefit from, sure.

But as it is, I believe those 5$ would just end up in the RIAA people's pockets, which is something I sure dont want, fsck the RIAA, they can kiss my a$$.
 
desy,

The official Napster server obviously has more users than the OpenNap network (where a bunch of opennap servers are connected to each other a la IRC).

However, there are still thousands, and that's plenty to find what you want. I do not by any means consider the official napster more "reliable" than opennap.

Remember before Napster got stayed and it was announced that it would shutdown in 24 hours? The opennap servers at that time were flooded with many more people, who eventually left after a few days back to the official Napster after it stayed. I see no reason why this wouldn't happen again (only on a more permanent basis) if napster shuts out the free users.

I'm not condoning it either way, I'm just stating what will happen.
 
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