After receiving a facelift from owner and software maker Roxio Inc., a test version of Napster debuted on Oct. 9, leaving behind its previous illegal file-swapping counterpart and offering users a subscription service.
The new version of the online music store will debut throughout the United States on Wednesday.
The test version of Napster 2.0 launched with more than 500,000 songs, giving customers the option of paying for a single song, an album or a monthly subscription. Individual songs cost 99 cents and albums cost $9.95. Monthly subscriptions are $9.95 and offer listeners a variety of features including unlimited listening and downloading and commercial-free radio stations.
Seth Oster, Napster's vice president of corporate communications, said users will get their money's worth with the new online music service, which offers high-quality songs and many other features that are absent on pirate sites.
"It's a more compelling and legal alternative than before," Oster said. "People will hopefully begin to see it's wrong to (share files illegally), and they'll begin to understand that services like Napster offer a lot more quality than pirate sites ever could or ever will."
But Napster's new online music service isn't the only one available to users. Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store, RealNetworks' Rhapsody, MusicMatch and a handful of other networks are among those competing for a spot in the online music-subscription market.
The Recording Industry Association of America has been targeting music pirates in an effort to shut down the illegal file-sharing networks. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows RIAA to send out information subpoenas to identify and shut down music pirates by contacting Internet service providers.
MSU receives between 100 and 200 RIAA complaints each month in the fall and between 400 and 600 complaints in the spring, said Scott Thomas, MSU's division manager of computing services.
Thomas said that online music-subscription services should help reduce illegal file sharing, but these services will need to pinpoint a cost that will attract people away from illegal networks and make their services easy.
"The trick is going to be where that price point is, where it's easy enough and cheap enough to determine whether people will use it," he said. "It will all be in the delivery method. I think the market will show if they hit the right price point."
Seth Swan said online music services that charge users won't reduce music piracy because of the higher knowledge of computers and how to avoid such services is widespread.
"I don't think there's much that should be done in reducing piracy," said the sociology senior at Lansing Community College. "The industry is on a serious decline with the music they put out, and people shouldn't have to spend a lot of money on two songs they like and eight songs that aren't worth much."
MSU graduate student Christie McCrumb said that while subscription-based services will reduce illegal file sharing over time, it's not a good idea for users to be charged a fee to download songs.
"A lot of up-and-coming artists are discovered by fans through downloading their music for free," McCrumb said. "It gets their name out a lot, and eventually, the artists will be supported if the people like them since people will go out and by their CD."
