Napster has revealed a new service that began on Thursday. For 15 dollars a month, you can download an unlimited amount of music and transfer it to your portable player. The idea being to lure away iTunes customers. But, the only thing is, you must renew your license every 30 days or presumably that will be the day the music died. This is due to the Janus technology that Napster has incorporated in this new DRM offer.
It will allow you to take your encrypted lossy tracks that you have downloaded to the hard drive, then transfer them to your player. As long as you keep up your monthly payment, you can keep downlaoding music and playing it, and Napster has over 1 million tunes. However, in order to burn any of the said tracks onto a media, you will have to pay a one dollar fee per track. Here is a statement from Napster CEO Chris Gorog:
|
"I think we will have some success in converting iPod users," Gorog said. "It is Apple that is refusing compatibility and not us. We would love for them to open up their system so that iPod users can participate in this." Though the iPod is not compatible with Napster, a slew of portable music devices are. Portable players from Creative Technology, Dell and iriver, among others, support Napster To Go. "If there is a major threat to iTunes, it exists in Janus," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group. "From a pure numbers standpoint, it looks much better because you get access to a million tracks." |
Anyone out there care to make a comment on this new Janus program? What do you think, will this pose a threat to iTunes, will it convert any of you iPod owners? Be sure to read the article from Wired in it's entirety and then give us your thoughts!
Source: Wired
