Feelings on Napster?


Hi, Since this is in part a forum about music, I'll put this statement and question on the table. In the past few months, I've begun to use Napster online. I'll look through the forum for reccomendations on good albums and tracks, then I'll download it on Napster, take a listen and, if I like it, purchase the album. My opinion is that Napster is really opening up accessibility to music for alot of people, allowing them to try new things that before they wouldn't have access to or simply wouldn't be prepared to invest in. It's helped expand my own horizons I know and I think it's good for music overall. Any opinions?
issabre
I never made a "deal" with any record company. I never agreed how I would use any of thier stuff. I Never signed a thing. If the government doesn't have a law against it and they don't say it's wrong then dang it I'm going to copy the songs and share them on napster. And download songs from other people also.
Oh yeah. 64 million people use napster. If napster were hurting the industry then man we would seriously see it by now with this many users. Yeah sales are down a bit but they have normal market fluctuation like that all the time. I still see tons of people in the cd stores and I can gaurantee you they all have computers and they all have napster. And besides now maybe the record companies will think twice about putting out crappy one hit wonder cd's and charging an exorbant price for it while that one song is hot. yeah they promote it like crazy like the whole cd is the best thing in the world and make killer sales on it while the bands name is the "hottest" thing out there. No more getting caught in that trap anymore for me. The record companies only let the radio stations and mtv play the one good song on the album for the first few months or so for this very reason.
Kacz: You said it prefectly - and that's why the record companies had better stop complaining and find a way to deal with it. How about cutting the prices of new CDs instead of raising them? Another method could be on-line direct sales. There's a jazz label, OkkaDisc, which has their entire catalog available on-line and way cheaper than at any store or on-line vendor. But that's just wishful thinking - they'll just raise prices and come with some godawful watermarking scheme - less sound, more money.
Carl: Your response was a bit over the top and you may even be correct. The music industry has survived plenty of "scares" - radio broadcast, MTV, home taping, live taping, etc. I've heard some really poor sounding live recordings that only a true fan would want to hear, let alone own. And I'm sure that there's plenty garbage out there on Napster that I wouldn't download, let alone buy. And what the heck are we doing in this tread discussing such a lo-fi format while the powers that be are busy gearing up for yet another format war (SACD vs. DVD Audio) and another round of us replacing all our Beatles recordings.