James Delahunty
9 Jul 2005 16:52
According to a survey conducted by a University customer, Napster has managed to make less people buy music from its music store, but has helped its biggest rivals sell more songs. Not one University of Rochester student admitted to purchasing any track from Napster’s catalogue during the Fall 2004 semester but the same people bought from other legal alternatives like Apple's iTunes. This is terrible news for Napster which has tried to dominate sales to students.
Napster offers universities dirt cheap rental services for their students to try to keep them away from illegal music downloading. The students can then download as much music and listen to it as they want to. Napster has been marketing its music rental service to consumers, claiming that its monthly fee beats the hell out of paying $10,000 to fill an iPod with music.
That claim is ridiculous for many reasons, but largely because a massive amount of music stored on iPods usually comes from the user's CD collection or their friend’s collection of music. This attacking strategy led to Napster reporting a $24 million fourth quarter loss.
Source:
The Register