My attempts to find out anything about Napster 2.0

2004.03.05 — Culture | Music | Internet | by Derek Jensen

Back in November, I heard that Napster was back in business as a legitimate enterprise and was selling songs at 99 cents apiece, in competition with Apple's iTune service.

Note: For the record, I hate cutesy fad capitalization in brand names. You can spell a name in all caps or all lowercase for artsy esthetics in layout, as I do in various places for this website, but a proper name has an initial capital only ("Tysto") in normal writing. The worst offender is "eBay" which insist on the capital B in writing, but which spells it "ebay" in its fucking logo. Stupid bastards.

Thinking that this sounded like a pretty good deal, I checked out Napster.com. It had no information about its service. I mean none. The only thing I could figure out is that they wanted me to download their special software.

Now, I reasoned, I can understand having to download the peer-to-peer software of the old Napster, when songs were given away on the black market by making them available directly from your own machine. But why should I have to download software to purchase music? I buy a lot of things on the Internet, and I've never downloaded special software to do it. Why would I?

So, I thought I would ask Napster.

Note: The e-mail messages below have been edited slightly for spelling and grammar.

I am very interested in your product, Napster 2.0. However I would like to know something about it before I download and install it-for example: anything. There is almost no information at all that suggests why I should download this software in order to buy music when there are hundreds of other e-commerce sites that don't require me to download any special software in order to buy things.

For example: What kind of service do you offer? Does Napster 2.0 offer video or only audio? Is Napster 2.0 full of spyware? How about adware? How is music packaged and presented? How much does it cost? Is the use of the music restricted in any sinister way that will make it worthless to me in the future? How much of my money will go to evil music executives and how much will go to hardworking creative artists? Will hardworking creative artists be able to bypass evil music executives completely by posting independently-produced music to Napster? Will this cause any evil music executives to starve to death? If so, will there be downloadable video of it?

=Derek Jensen=

The folks at Napster got back to me with a strange reply.

Hi !

Thanks for contacting Napster Support.

Napster is not ripping off artists

In fact, we have agreements with the record labels under which Napster compensates the labels for the use of the music in the Napster service. Contracts between artists and labels determine how royalties are paid to artists. We want our members to enjoy music !!!

The Napster team

They seemed to think I believed they were still not paying artists for their music. But I knew they were. What I was asking was about how much actually went to the artists instead of evil executives. But what I really wanted to know what if there was adware in it. So I tried again.

Thanks for your reply. However, you didn't actually answer any question that I asked. You actually answered the only question that I already know the answer to. I understand from reviews that Napster now legally sells individual songs for 99 cents each. This sounds great to me, and I am very interested in it. But your website does not explain or describe any aspect of this. And your television commercials, while featuring a cute animated kitty, also do not contain any actual information.

Let me clarify:

1) In order to buy something from Amazon.com or Buy.com or practically any other website, I don't have to download any special software. Why do I have to download something in order to buy music from Napster?

2) What kind of services do you offer? Your website does not have *any* information other than that some services are free and some are not.

You see, the problem is that I once downloaded the Real Audio player and found that it loaded all kinds of junk on my machine: numerous icons, favorites, registry settings I didn't want, etc., *and* it hijacked WAV and other audio file types, so that it was then the player of choice for them as well. Plus it served up *advertisements* from time to time. It was a serious hassle to remove and, I suspect, collected information about me that was beamed back to its masters. Needless to say, I will never download anything from them again.

If that's the way Napster works, I don't want it.

=Derek Jensen=

Pretty straightforward, right? "Does Napster 2.0 force a bunch of advertising down my throat?" At least Real Audio is free. If they need to shove ads at me to pay their bills, that's fair. But planting a bunch of links and registry settings is underhanded. And reporting my behavior to the home office without explicitly saying so is just plain unethical (Kazaa is worse!). I sure don't want to pay for the privilege on top of it. Reasonable? Napster has this to say.

Hi Scott

Thanks for contacting Napster Support.

Napster is not a peer-to-Peer network

Peer-to-peer networks are popular, but they're also risky. With Napster you don't have to open a folder on your hard drive to total strangers, nor do you have to worry about getting spy ware, viruses, bogus song tracks, or other surprises. All of Napster's content is provided by Napster's secure servers so we can guarantee that you get nothing but quality music.

When responding on this issue, please reply with email history or copy the entire body of this email and paste it into your reply to ensure that all information is retained. Not providing the email history could delay our response time.

Thanks for using Napster!
John B.
The Napster team

I don't know where John B got the impression that my name was Scott. I clearly signed my messages with my real real name and town. But much worse, he seems to think that I believe Napster 2.0 is peer-to-peer software. He reassures me that Napster is not peer-to-peer and says that it will provide me with "nothing but quality music." So... no ads? I'm skeptical.

Wow. This is quite fascinating. You have again answered a different question from the ones I asked. It is nice to know that Napster is not a peer-to-peer network, since I have heard very nasty things about certain P2P sites, but this only underscores the main actual question.

Why do users have to download software in order to buy songs from Napster, and what does this software do? I don’t download special software to buy products from Amazon.com or Buy.com, so your software must do something special. But is it the good kind of special or the bad kind of special...?

I hate to be a pest, but all of these questions could be answered if you just had any actual information on your website.

=Derek Jensen=

I guess I shouldn't have gotten so smart-assed. They didn't reply again.

Happily, Napster does have more information on its website now (not that I had much to do with it, I'm sure). It still doesn't mention ads or whether I can listen to the songs I buy on two different computers. Now that some time has passed, there are plenty of detailed reviews. Too bad Napster couldn't be bothered to explain itself up front.

f e e d b a c k

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