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The Superbowl is full of memorable commercials. One you may have missed this year was a commercial for Napster. I believe it only played once and there was absolutely nothing about it that made it memorable.
The commercial panned around a stadium of people that was supposed to look like the actual Superbowl. It then stops and zooms in on Napster's mascot (a cross between a rabbit and a bat, in my opinion). The mascot is holding a barely readable sign that headlines "Do the math". Underneath the headline are two equations that basically say that the same music you can download from Napster for $15 per month will cost you $10,000 at Apple's iTunes music store. I don't think this commercial could have been any more boring, uniformative, or hard to read. The advertising agency they used must have been run by the same monkeys in the Careerbuilder commercials.
Napster was the pioneer in the free file sharing revolution. Eventually, the courts shut Napster down and now it is a legitimate company. Napster has sold music for 99 cents a song for over a year now. Their weak Superbowl commercial was trying to advertise their newest service - Napster To Go.
Napster To Go breaks away from the current model of selling music online for around $1 per song (which Napster still does as well). Instead, the Napster To Go service allows you to download as many songs as you like for $15 per month. Sounds good, right? But, there's a catch. A big catch. All of the songs you download come with a technology that basically gives each song an expiration mechanism. If you don't continue to pay your $15 per month subscription fee, the songs will expire and you won't be able to listen to them. Also, only certain music players are compatible with the new expiration system.
I've been wrong about new technology before, but to me, this seems like a ludicrous idea. First, in a sense, you are renting music from Napster. This just doesn't fit with our notions of dealing with music. For the past 100 years or so, when we bought music we were free to do (for all intensive purposes) whatever we wanted to do with it for as long as we owned it.
Second, the price is way too high. In the Superbowl ad, Napster tries to make it look like the amount of music you can download from Napster for $15 would cost $10,000 at the iTunes music store. This might be true for one month's time, but all of those songs you download from Napster will only be there if you continue to pay $15 per month. Think about it this way, for the cost of Napster's monthly subscription fee, you could download one song every other day from iTunes. And, that music is yours forever! I don't think I would ever download 15 songs per month, but then again, I'm definitly not a music aficionado.
I'm assuming that the main people that Napster is targeting with this service are young people that are into pop music. Pop music tends to gain popularity and then quickly fade away, which fits the rental model because you wouldn't miss those songs if you ever stopped paying the subscription fee. But, you're still paying a full $15 per month just for this benefit, and that's not including the hundreds of dollars you have to invest in a compatible digital music player. Let's not forget that music download services aren't exactly instant, on-demand services. Even on a fast internet connection, you might be waiting hours for all of your favorite music to download.
The Napster To Go service makes satellite radio look like an even better idea. If you've read my previous blogatorial on satellite radio, you know I'm not a huge fan of that, either. I just can't see paying a monthly fee for something that's not much better at adding some sound in my life than a radio or the jukebox in my computer. But, since Sirius only costs $12.95 per month, plays in my home and car, and has a huge selection of music, talk, sports, and more with no downloading - I would definitely consider satellite radio before this gimmicky service.
