Sunday, February 13, 2005

Napster To Campaign Aggressively Against iPod

I love this idea - being one of those people who can't afford (or chooses not to afford) to pay the ridiculous amounts of money being charged for iPods. I'd gladly buy a cheaper portable player and sign up with Napster! I thought Napster's Super Bowl commercial with the price comparison vs. iPod was very effective. It's got me thinking about buying a Napster-compatible player!

Slashdot | Napster To Campaign Aggressively Against iPod: "Forbes reports that Napster plans an aggressive marketing campaign against Apple's iPod as part of its subscription service full launch later this quarter. Napster's service uses Microsoft's Janus technology to enable DRM protected music files 'bought' through subscription services to be transferred from a PC to a portable music player. Napster CEO Chris Gorog said the company is betting heavily that their monthly 'all you can eat' subscription service will win the battle for online digital music services, claiming, 'It's exactly what consumers want to do. Napster To Go is very similar to the P2P experience.' He believes the best way to market the service is to emphasize its advantages over iTunes and its iPod-only compatibility. 'We're going to be communicating to people that it's stupid to buy an iPod.' Maybe I'm too old to get it, but I fail to see the attraction of paying a monthly fee for as long as I want to have access to my music.' Of course, if Napster To Go supported iPod, they'd have a much larger install base to convince to use their service, instead of still pleading people to buy a portable player with compatible DRM installed."

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