Dumbster
Napster has to be the stupidist company in the music business today.
Not only is their overpriced “Napster To Go” a complete rip-off
(Yahoo!’s service is currently half the price), but now they’ve
announced that are teaming up with Swedish phone manufacturer Ericsson
to create a deal that will develop the first digital music service for
cell phones.
Napster was great five years ago, when everything
was free! Sure, downloading of music without paying for it was/is
illegal, but that’s not the point here.
What is
the point is that people don’t want to pay $15.00 to rent songs right
now, and they sure as hell don’t want to replace their iPods with cell
phones. What happens when you have exhausted all of your battery life
listening to an album that you have no juice left to make an important
phone call? Or if you’re on an airplane and want to listen to music,
but have to keep your phone turned off?
I wish Napster would
just go away. It’s a tainted brand. It was great when I was in college
and could download songs and albums I never would’ve bought in a
million years. Not because I’m a cheap bastard that doesn’t support
“the arts,” but because I was a poor college kid who didn’t have $15.00
to spend on The Breakfast Club soundtrack, but really wanted to listen
to Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”