Napster CEO rips Apple

Randman

Randman

HA! HA! HA!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1164179,00.html

'Napster is a Windows Media Audio house designed around that digital rights management,' Chris Gorog [Napster CEO] says. 'We are a believer in the technology and we believe it's going to be, and basically is, the ubiquitous platform. Companies pushing a propriety agenda are consumer-unfriendly experiences because they're cloistering them in an experience that they can't leave and eliminating choice.'

Gorog believes pressure from iPod owners will force Apple to reconsider its stance: 'The iPod is great if you're happy to only shop at one record store. It's like buying a car and finding you can only drive down one road. I think consumers, when they understand that, will be kind of pissed off,' he says."
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Hmmm, I wonder if he said that with a straight face.
 
The things he talks about are completely retarded. In the article about how iPod users will be pissed when they realize they can't use the other music stores. Wow, I can't use Napsters music store. Why would I want to? Online music is for the most part a homogenious market. Meaning all the products are pretty much the same. The only difference between a song I get on iTunes, and a song I get on Napster, is that the one from iTunes works on the device I want. There is no price war in digital music.

Microsoft has been trying to make Windows look like a platform for digital music market, but there isn't a market at all, when all the retailers have the exact same products, at the exact same price.

Who cares though, Roxio will probably be bought out by Microsoft by the end of the year anyway. Napster has been a collasal failure. It is losing millions of dollars monthy. Apple has sold over 100,000 iPod Mini's, I read another place where they speculated that they have probably sold 100,000 more since then. Add that to the 2 million iPod customers that are out there.

Napster is irrelevant.

Apple's iPod product line is filling out very nicely with the iPod, iPod mini, and HP's Digital Media Player.

What does Napster have? A bunch of gay ads with a cat, and a backlog of worthless Samsung Napster players that no one wants.
 
the guy is simply afraid...
Apple is doing better as time goes on...and it doesnt look good for Roxio.
Apple is not making a profit from the ITMS.. but is shure is selling a hell of a lot iPods...

roxio on the other hand has problems... many important ppl have left from the project since it has started. roxios stock has declined quite a bit due to napster...
and of course the most important... the music service is not profitable!!!!
and with competition increasing with time... profits will not rise!!!

good luck napster.. (ull need it)!!!
 
soulseek said:
the guy is simply afraid...
Apple is doing better as time goes on...and it doesnt look good for Roxio.
Apple is not making a profit from the ITMS.. but is shure is selling a hell of a lot iPods...

roxio on the other hand has problems... many important ppl have left from the project since it has started. roxios stock has declined quite a bit due to napster...
and of course the most important... the music service is not profitable!!!!
and with competition increasing with time... profits will not rise!!!

good luck napster.. (ull need it)!!!
Click to expand...

You probably already know this, but Apple makes 35c per song sold. 25c goes to distribution, 10c goes into their pocket. Not much, but neither is the 99c song.

As for Napster, they were DOA and I can't figure out why they even tried to come back as a pay service. It was one of the dumbest moves of this century.

Itunes is the only online store that will ever get my dollar and I don't even use an iPod, I burn the music to disc then re-import it as a non-protected file to run on my iRiver IHP-120.
 
they also ALWAYS forget about the 'normal' way of acquiring music for an iPod. Me, for example, I CANNOT use iTunes Music Store here in Switzerland. What do I do? I go buy a CD! Yes, it's not the online way, but it's the FIRST thing the iPod was goint to be: A digital music player for the songs you've imported into iTunes...

As a Swiss person, I don't really care about Napster or iTMS, as I cannot access _either_ at the moment.
 
Hear, hear! I sure hope Apple will bring the iTMS to Europe soon, as they are missing out customers big time. Online purchases in Europe are growing fast, there's a lot of untapped market here. The iPod has been a huge success all over the world, yet Apple strangely has chosen to release the miniPod only in the US for now ... had they made a worldwide release they would have had 200.000 mini's on pre-order I deem ... maybe it is so successfull that they can't meet demand? They already have a dominant slice of the marketshare and are going to increase it substantially with the mini: Jobs strategy apparently worked fine. Both online music distributors and the other mp3 player manufacturers are clearly getting worried ... :D

(ahem ... off topic: 1000 posts! :D ...)
 
The whole debate about "Apple's itunes is going to lose out" misses that important point citizentony made. Napster, HAS to make a profit on the music is offers for download. if not, Roxio will shut it down after losing another $billion, or someone like MSFT will buy it. Apple doesn't need to make a profit. So long as they break even, they are fine. iPods, and the new HP branded iPods will make the money. iTMS is the bait to lead people to the iPod/HPod (hey.. i just noticed that. HP; HP iPod; HPod. they could USE that.. eh eh..)
 
I think the Napster guy realizes that Apple is doing the digital music thing the right way. His comments are certainly immature.
 
Napsters business model is a flop. Think about it, people used Napster in the beginning because it was free (illegal downloading). Roxio bought a company that was noted to be participating in illegal activities and then tried to clean up their image, and charge some money.
It might have worked, if it didn't take them the better part of 3 years to come out with this. If they had turned it around within a year, then perhaps they would be okay. They came out a little too late into the market. There is too much competition. It is going to be another .bomb scenario, and after the dust settles, there will probably be only 2-3 competitors in this industry.
 
About renaming the HP iPod to something like hPod: I don't see that happening. iPod is a far better name for marketing now, with all of Apple's success with it. My guess: It'll just be called 'iPod'. You'll have HP iPods and Apple iPods.
 
I agree with fryke in terms of the naming. However, I would not be surprised if HP somehow modifies the name to fit with their branding.
 
Yeah whats the damn holdup? I wish they would just accept that the dolllar isnt going to rise substantially, and start selling the iPod Mini in Europe. I can't, and will never be able to, afford an iPod. If they don't hurry I'm going to have to get any old mp3 player, as I don't have personal stereo at all at the moment.
 
You could ask someone really nicely to send you a used one from the US... ;)

So, does anyone have any more details on the HP iPod yet? I want to know what it's gonna look like :)
 
citizentony said:
You probably already know this, but Apple makes 35c per song sold. 25c goes to distribution, 10c goes into their pocket. Not much, but neither is the 99c song.

As for Napster, they were DOA and I can't figure out why they even tried to come back as a pay service. It was one of the dumbest moves of this century.

Itunes is the only online store that will ever get my dollar and I don't even use an iPod, I burn the music to disc then re-import it as a non-protected file to run on my iRiver IHP-120.
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To the contrary, 10c/song is a tremendous profit. That is better than 10% profit which is better than Apple's profit on the iPod, G5, and the rest of its hardware. Where do you get your numbers?
 
When the deal was announced, they showed an iPod (it looks just like an iPod) with HP engraved on the back and it was that company's blue-tinged color scheme.
 
MisterMe said:
To the contrary, 10c/song is a tremendous profit. That is better than 10% profit which is better than Apple's profit on the iPod, G5, and the rest of its hardware. Where do you get your numbers?
Click to expand...

Actually, what I have understood is that Apple actually makes margins more along the lines of 24-26% on their hardware. However, due to their cost of sales, and inventory, it makes the number seem like less.
 
dlloyd said:
You could ask someone really nicely to send you a used one from the US... ;)

So, does anyone have any more details on the HP iPod yet? I want to know what it's gonna look like :)
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it looks just like an iPod except it is blue and has an HP logo on the back. its named the "HP digital music player"
 
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