July 2000 • Rockbites Alternative Daily
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July 2000 • Rockbites Alternative Daily
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Napster use quadruples following free publicity 31 July 2000
Now Keynote Systems, who track Internet traffic, says that use of the music service has quadrupled following Napster’s successful appeal on Friday to remain open. Keynote spokesperson Allen Tsai said while MP3 trading through Napster may taper off in the coming weeks, he expects it will shoot up again at the next instance of legal publicity. Before the surge, Napster claimed 22 million users. The conflict between Napster and the RIAA boils down to two perspectives. Napster holds that unrestricted music trading encourages and educates fans, who then buy more CDs. The RIAA holds that traded music results in lost revenue for artists and for their record labels. Internet-quality MP3 files sound inferior to the CDs from which they’re copied, and entail other disadvantages (no artwork, less portability). For these reasons, CDs will remain desirable relative to MP3s for some time to come. In addition, most MP3 files downloaded from Napster take a long time to get, since the download speed is restricted by the providing Napster member’s own upload speed. Record labels could render Napster irrelevant by providing MP3 files themselves: the labels could ensure consistent quality and could provide the infrastructure to slash the file download times. The superior user experience may even support nominal subscription fees. | BBC story | | Napster | | top of page | |
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