The State of Digital Music: 10 Years after the Birth of Napster

Today is the 10th anniversary of the debut of the original Napster, the game-changing peer-to-peer file sharing service created by Shawn Fanning. A perfect day upon which to reflect what’s happened in the world of music this past decade and think about the future going forward.

In 1999, music lovers around the world immediately embraced Napster. It had never been easier to discover and acquire new music. While the original Napster hadn’t thought through how to protect artists’ rights, the experience was about much more than “free music.” Napster was about putting the control into consumers’ hands so they could find virtually any song they could think of and, as importantly, they could easily discover and enjoy new music. It quickly became an ever-expanding, very exciting world of music discovery. And it changed the music industry and entertainment business forever – overnight. In virtually one instant, all of the power belonged to the consumer.

Ever since the demise of the original Napster, the industry, technologists and entrepreneurs have been playing catch-up with countless efforts to replicate the excitement of the original Napster within a legal framework. What was once relatively simple became very challenging, as the task of properly respecting artists’ rights and insuring payment to the individual rights holders is complex. And the industry spent too many years trying to lock and protect content instead of focusing on a great consumer experience. The imposition of DRM created a nightmare of interoperability challenges and a lack of portability. That, combined with no comprehensive catalog, further thwarted the healthy development of legal digital music.

While it has taken almost 10 years to create legal music services that deliver some of the fundamental qualities of the original Napster, happily a lot of great progress has been made.  Consumers can, finally, legally buy an MP3 that can be played anywhere without restriction. When Napster re-launched as a legal service in the fall of 2003, we offered 500,000 songs.  Today we offer over eight million and feature catalogs of the four major record label and thousands of independents. You can now also stream millions of songs on-demand from any web connection, delivering on the technology dream of “the celestial jukebox.”

We are honored to have had the opportunity over the past 10 years to try to solve this extraordinary and exciting challenge of delivering the world’s music catalog to music fans around the globe - while at the same time insuring the artists that create this beautiful world of music can make a living.

So – that’s where we’ve been.  Let’s take a look at where digital music is today:

The prevailing legal business model today in digital music is the á la carte download store. We believe these types of music stores serve an important function as a place to purchase tracks, but they are not the best way to discover and enjoy music. Listening to 30-second clips and having to make a buying decision every time one wants to hear a song restricts the discovery and enjoyment of new artists and new genres. Whereas unlimited on-demand streaming services promote the discovery of new music and revitalize one’s enjoyment of music overall. When you add to this experience features such as genre, mood and topical playlists, programmed radio stations and automatic personalized playlist generation, the experience becomes a completely immersive one that enhances an individual’s music life. A complete music streaming service provides consumers with the “lean forward” experience of searching for music and organizing playlists, as well as the “lean back” experience of simply enjoying programmed music.

Over the last few years, free ad-supported streaming services have sprouted up all over the web, creating many buzz-worthy moments in the digital media world. While there are a number of interesting and useful free music discovery sites online today, most of them end up hobbling their services over time – with ads, play restrictions, poor bit rates and worse – deteriorating the original experience. Most challenging for these free services is that, as of yet, no service has “cracked the nut” and figured out how to create a profitable business model by giving away music for free. I believe a high-quality paid streaming experience is a great solution for many people, particularly since Napster was recently able to dramatically drive the price down to create an outstanding value. A great paid streaming experience like Napster provides high quality on-demand streaming without ads, play restrictions, poor bit rates and the like, and represents a great alternative to some of the pitfalls of the free services.

With Napster’s new offering introduced on May 18, we believe we bring the best of both worlds together. Five bucks each month gets you 5 MP3s that will work on virtually any device available – plus – a premium on-demand music streaming experience. It may have taken 10 years to do it, but this is the closest we’ve ever come to delivering on the free-wheeling discovery and enjoyment offered by the original Napster. Napster users can even share songs and playlists back and forth to continue enhancing discovery and making the experience a highly personal one. “My Page” customizes the Napster experience for users so they can enjoy their own personal version of Napster based on their actual interaction with the service.  While we always have a lot more we want to do, we think Napster is in a great place right now.

As we think about the future, our bottom-line thesis is that we think it’s all going to be about unlimited, on-demand streaming. Downloads will of course continue to have an important role, but we as an industry have not even scraped the surface on how prevalent on-demand streaming will become. Once you connect Napster to your home entertainment system and have on-demand access to virtually every song you can think of, there's no turning back. Many of our customers can’t imagine life without it – and neither can we!

Thanks for dropping in. It’s been a very interesting and exciting decade in digital music – and I’m guessing there’s a lot of intrigue ahead of us as well. One thing for sure – music fans have never had more opportunities to discover and enjoy music. 

So, as we begin now to look forward to the next 10 years, what are your thoughts about what we might see going forward?  What do you think about music today?  How do you see it evolving? What do you hope for in the future?

-Chris

Comments

[DashboardDJ856]

On this weeks Napster Homepage, they are promoting Third Eye Blind's new album Ursa Major. Nappy is so proud of themselves they also say they have an exclusive track "BonFire Chant" Guess what??? It is a 30 second snippet. But wait, it doesn't stop there!!! It's the only 30 second snippet on the whole album!!!!
That's Our Nappy!!! Ahead of the pack!!!

[DashboardDJ856]

OH Bravo!!! It seems like every 2 months we get a state of the union address from you 2 chris's about how great nappy is. But nothing ever seems to change. The only reason you went to MP3s & DRM tunes was, coz everyone else was doing it. It wasn't any great innovation from Napster.
It's been over 3 years now since you promised to straighten the genre & sub-genre situation, yet nothing has changed. For instance, today I was looking for a song from the singer/songwriter Wood. Well lo & behold, there are 2 Woods, one a singer/songwriter, the other a rap artist. So of course their songs & albums are intermingled under the tracks section.
Last month, I reported a similar problem when looking for a song by the children's group called The Jimmies. Well guess what, there are 2 groups called The Jimmies, one is a children's group & the other a punk/pop band. So intermingled with the children's songs is explicit songs mixed in with the kids songs. Nice!!
When Napster took down the old genre system 3 years ago, Napster said that they would take about 6 months to a year to straighten it out. Well it's been 3 years now. Rhapsody and other music services don't seem to have this problem. When you do a search in their system, they come up as: 1)The Jimmies (children) 2) The Jimmies (punk/pop) You click on the genre you want.
So why is it taking Napster so long? How hard can it be to straighten this out????
3 years!!!!!

You still haven't straightened out the ampersand & apostrophe problem. Every week I still see more albums, tracks, & artists coming up with this problem in the new releases. Do you people actually have programmers that know what they are doing??? I also don't see Rhapsody or other music services with this problem either.

And the last thing I want to mention is the 30 second clips. "Listening to 30 second clips and having to make a buying decision every time one wants to hear a song restricts the discovery and enjoyment of new artists and new genres." Your quotes on the subject. You keep saying there is "unlimited" on-demand streaming, when you don't have it!!!! We are still subject to 30 second clips, yet you don't mention it anywhere in the contract. Very deceptive!
And I repeat,"What genres"?

I repeat, Napster, your still acting like a Neanderthal in the 21st century!

[DashboardDJ856]

The State Of Napster 10 Years After It's Birth!

One word - Pathetic!

In June over at Rhapsody, they give away to all subscribers their free music download of the day. They also give away via their Rhapsody Twitter feed, free Logitech didgital gear and posters signed by Rob Thomas. They actually have genres & sub genres that work. Also when you click on an artist, you have an option to click on the band's website. They don't have an ampersand & apostrophe problem with artists & albums. You can do a search with lyrics. When you do a search, your not limited to only 500 results.

Napster, your still acting like a Neanderthal in the 21st century.

[DashboardDJ]

Chris, Napster isn't or can't tell you that information, because all contracts are different, unless Napster has a 'Take it or Leave it' contract. But if you want a good idea of how the music business works. Read the information in this book to give you an idea. I believe it was written in 2005, but the basics still apply today. It is a book on amazon and most of it is FREE to read.... http://books.google.com/books?id=rIYYW8s1GvkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s If you can't or don't want to copy that go to www.amazon.com and look for the book by Steve Gordon called The Future Of The Music Business.

[Chris Castiglione]

How much ($ amount) does the artist get paid when a song is streamed on Napster?

In response to this line:
"while at the same time insuring the artists that create this beautiful world of music can make a living"

[DashboardDJ]

Now that's funny & sad at the same time. Napster took down the blog about it's new $5 plan because there were too many people complaining about it.

Napster's motto is: "if you can't stand the heat, remove the kitchen!"

[DashboardDJ]

I understand publishing rights and all of that legal mumbo jumbo, what I don't understand is Napster using the term 'unlimited' , when 30 seconds is not unlimited. It is deceptive.

Regarding search, Aren't browsing & search the same thing. Most people are looking for new music, so they explore all over.
Let's see go through each album looking for tracks, instead of finding them in one place and putting them in alphabetical order, sounds a lot more manageable. Please speak English instead of corporate speak, "Story by album or track"? I want to click on Johnny Cash and see everything not go on an endless nappy hunting & clicking expedition like a lot of features.

When I go to Best Buy, I also see Napster first, but if read down a little further, under Need Help? click on Best Buy Digital Store, you will see Best Buy Digital Musical Store powered by Rhapsody. Does Best Buy also own a piece of Rhapsody?

Napster still hasn't fixed the ampersand & apostrophe problem in the artist, album & track. If you need some examples, I will give them in my nest post.

Tanx for the feedback. Dash =8-)

[Patrick Blattner]

Hi Dash,

We appreciate the input. Due to publishing rights, a small percentage of tracks cannot be streamed in their entirety. This is an issue upon which Napster (and other music services) is working diligently, as we want to make every song available for listening. We are making every effort to make this number smaller and smaller until it is zero. This number of 30-second clips is the same for Napster To Go as it is for the new $5/month Napster, as they publishing rights are the same.

Regarding Search.. When someone uses the search function instead of browsing, we assume one is looking for something specific. To help in this regard, we chose to keep the results to a manageable level. If you want to see all the albums and tracks by an artist, like Johnny Cash as you mention, you can simply go to browse artists and story by album or track to see everything.

When I go to the BestBuy.com and click on "Music Downloads", the first thing I see is Napster.

Thanks again for our comments. They are appreciated.

- Patrick Blattner, Director of Product Management

[DashboardDJ]

Chris, you keep on using that term 'unlimited' and it's not. As usual Napster is twisting the word 'unlimited', because there are still hundreds of thousands of songs that are 30 second snippets and as a NTG subscriber you can't stream the whole song. You even say in this article that listening to 30 second clips restricts the discovery and enjoyment of new artists and genres.
Does the new $5/5 free songs plan also have 30 second clips? If not, how can us NTG subscribers also get rid of 30 second clips? Would we basically have to subscribe to the 2 differet plans with 2 different accounts or can Napster integrate the new plans and just charge us an extra $5. Or why can't NTG subscribers just have full song streaming capabilities without the download feature on 30 second clips?

Even though Napster claims to have over 8 million songs, (it seems like 1 million karaoke songs) when you do a search it only shows 500 results. That needs to be changed. Two examples: When you do a search for Christmas albums, you only get 500 results. When I do a Rhapsody search it shows me all 5,729 albums. I'm absolutely positive that Napster also has that many albums. Which albums are being restricted? Why show only the top 500? I can't even break it down by genre. It doesn't make sense. Let us decide how many albums we want to look at. Another example is Johnny Cash. If you do a track search, we are only restricted to 500 tracks. Yet the other music service shows over 2,400 tracks. I'm sure Napster has an equal amount. Yet how do we see all of the tracks at once if we are only restricted to 500? It needs to be changed.

Can you explain to me why the Best Buy website still uses Rhapsody as it's musical digital store to purchase mp3's?

As always, trying to make Napster the best music subscription sevice - Dash

[Dave Allen]

Chris, I was expecting a deeper analysis of the state of digital music than this. You've basically written an essay about what we already know, your twist being the chance to pimp Napster's service.

You are correct in one thing - the music consumer is moving away from 'owning' songs to accessing them wherever they go and yet your service still offers 5 MP3s for $5. In effect you are charging for the streaming option so why not be transparent?

And you didn't mention in your essay about how music fans consume music these days - as in they download single tracks not albums as far as the data shows.

I could go on but I'll leave you with a link to an article I wrote on a similar subject that you may find interesting - http://www.pampelmoose.com/2009/04/the-end-of-the-music-album-as-the-organizing-principle