Napster

I came across an amusing ad for Napster at getthewholething.com and took another look at Napster's offerings. I was disappointed to the extent that I sent a fairly detailed letter to Napster listing all of the things I saw wrong with their service at first glance. I am posting the letter here to welcome comments and criticism from anybody with an opinion.

I recently saw a commercial from your ad campaign about music not limited to 30 second clips and decided to sign up for a trial account however, when I went to register I was informed that Mac OSX is not supported. If the product is good enough I have no problem running it under Virtual PC but as I looked more into Napster, I was even less likely to use your service. I have collected a list of things that Napster could do to compete better with the offerings of your competitors.

  1. Operating System Independence. If you are all about freedom and choice with your music as your website indicates, why are you discriminating against Linux, Unix, BSD, Solaris, Mac OSX, and hundreds of other operating systems by not supporting open standards?
  2. Compatible Music Format. The Napster website refers to tracks as MP3s on many pages particularly the FAQ even though you only support Windows Media format audio. The only music format that is supported universally amongst portable devices is MP3. You don't see players on the market that support only WMA or only AAC. MP3 is considered a standard because it IS a standard.
  3. Support the iPod. 80% of the portable music player market cannot be ignored if you plan to make as much as a dent in your competitor's sales. the FAQ page on napster.com states that Apple has locked Napster out of the iPod. This is far from the truth because it will accept standard format tracks from anywhere, not just iTunes.
  4. Higher Bitrate Tracks. My biggest complaint with every online music store is that none of them have more than 128 Kbps audio. While this may be fine for your half-deaf audiences, most of your target demographic (teen and college students) grew up listening to CDs and are not as forgiving as older generations are when it comes to noise and artifacts in audio. Supporting lossless audio would put Napster far beyond the competition when it comes to sound quality. Why should I spend money on your service if I can go to the store and buy a much higher quality recording in physical form for approximately the same price?

Finally, I'd like to note that by performing any one of the aforementioned actions would put Napster on par or ahead of the competition. Supporting Mac OSX would give Napster a priority on college campuses where Apple products are becoming more and more dominant, leaving users no choice other than iTunes for online music regardless of what contracts the university signs with Napster.

Even though I am an Apple fanboy, I'd still like to see some better competition in the online music market. Something to get the record companies to realize that they can't just shove this stuff down our throats the way they want it by pressuring the few online music stores that exist. Steve Jobs can only hold them off for so long before the record companies start to take more direct control over the iTunes Music Store.

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