Napster 2.0 Go Live Next Week

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Napster 2.0 public beta to go live next week

Napster will be reborn next week, when Roxio releases a public beta test version of the online music service.

Roxio acquired Napster last November, essentially paying $5 million for the name. It also owns the Pressplay subscription-based music service launched by major labels Universal and Sony, but later offloaded to Roxio.

The new service, dubbed Napster 2.0, probably owes more to Apple's iTunes Music Service than the notorious music sharing software of old, long since shut down by the music industry's contributory copyright infringement lawsuit.

Roxio's USP the Napster brand name, familiar to millions of music lovers and computer users. Samsung is launching a Napster-branded music player for the online service hoping that the new, legal offering will pull in the punters as well as the old, not-so-legal one did.

Napster 2.0 will launch against pay-per-download services Musicmatch and BuyMusic, and subscription-based offerings like Real Networks' Rhapsody and MusicNet's band of retailers. iTunes Music Store will be up and running on Windows by the end of the year, and Dell is expected to launch its music store later this month too.

Roxio has already said Napster will offer both one-off downloads and a premium subscription service. It will almost certainly be based on Windows Media 9 technology, not the MP3 format that made its name - particularly since it has a tie-in with Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, which launched earlier this week. Roxio has long licensed its CD burning technology to Microsoft as the basis of Windows XP's CD-R/RW functionality.

The company also claims it will launch with 500,000 songs - more than double what existing services have to offer, though Musicmatch claims it will have that number of tracks for sale by the end of the year.

SOURCE

[Sparkle1984]

How exactly will it work, and how much will it cost to subscribe? And if someone does not want to subscribe, how many files will they be allowed to share?

[j4y3m]

and.....how easy will it be to crack

[Jay]

when the hell will these big music companies learn that people will not pay for what they can get for free

[Gre1]

I wouldn't even think about downloading that or subscribing, it's not napster because Napster was free. That Flapster 2.0 will never be as good as the original.

[internet.news]

hi,

i jujst wanted to mention that if a subscription service is fast - means:
I only need 2-5 minutes for each song or better faster - I would probably use
it but anyway, I would share the downloaded song on kazaa lite k++,
cause there is more behind the idea of sharing: we have to share our thoughts openly to understand each other better. I also share nearly any new - hard to order
or to find cd on kazaa lite k++, the new blue experience...

thanks anyway, david.

[junkyardking]

Originally posted by internet.news@4 October 2003 - 20:28
hi,

i jujst wanted to mention that if a subscription service is fast - means:
I only need 2-5 minutes for each song or better faster - I would probably use
it but anyway, I would share the downloaded song on kazaa lite k++,
cause there is more behind the idea of sharing: we have to share our thoughts openly to understand each other better. I also share nearly any new - hard to order
or to find cd on kazaa lite k++, the new blue experience...

thanks anyway, david.

It will have DRM all over and sharing these files would be pretty useless as noone else would be able to play them.

[Adster]

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