Napster - NAPS - Share Chat

Think twice before jumping in on this. I won’t be supporting Napster knowing their past product intentionally made stealing more accessible, without caring for the impact this had on peoples creativity and livelihoods.

The Napster that exists today shares nothing but the name with the Napster from 20 years ago. It’s fully licensed by all the major rights holders now

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Sweep it under the rug and forget about it mentality? No thanks.

Yes, I’m also worried about the coca in my cola!

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The old napster is no more. This company does everything legit and only shares a name.

Further up this thread someone has said (admittedly without a source) that these actually pay artists more for their content than other streaming services. If this is the case, there is nothing wrong with this.

Also the same comment said it was the user base using it for illegal downloads, the old Napster client wasn’t built for illegal file sharing and downloads.

As others have mentioned, Napster as a brand is completely different to the Napster P2P sharing platform of yesteryear.

Fact is back in those days Artists would still sell physical albums and make much better money from doing so… for the few million albums that were shared in napster they were still much better off than being signed up with the likes of spotify, youtube and the like.

the below site is an interesting read on who the real crooks are…

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here’s the source ataylor

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Many thanks

I was dubious about whether I could make the switch over to Napster because I was so familar with Spotify - but it was actually much easier than I thought it would be. The library isn’t complete but about 95% of music I want to listen to is present. Overall, the experience is up there with the mainstays of music streaming.

I mention this because I think it’s important that Napster is ready for an influx of users, there’s no point investing if the company can’t handle the increased userbase. But it could. All it would need is a few high profile artists to encourage fans to make the switch for ethical reasons (Napster pays a lot more per listen than it’s competitors), then we’d see a change.

This is speculative, first the platform would need to engage with artists by doing exclusive performances and such - free exclusive MelodyVR experiences with a Napster subscription seems the obvious choice for starters

Overall, let’s see what management do. It has a lot of potential but it needs work and investment.

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Totally agree! and thanks for the review :+1: I actually think this is a really good stock for the future and the link up with BMW should be a big boost when the car market returns to normal.

At least my balance hopes so :joy:

https://connecteddrive.bmwlaunchpad.co.uk/services/bmw-music

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People underestimate how important this issue is for artists and fans. Look at the rise of Bandcamp. Problem as always is generating visibility.

That’s a fantastic idea, better than anything I’ve heard that they’re planning.

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These are either going to explode or die

My feeling is die - other streaming services are so far ahead. Is their VR tech good enough to compete with the likes of Apple and Amazon?

To me the issue is unless Melody has an archive from which it can upload from time to time, what are they gonna do while live music is dead?

I feel like it will be quite popular when live music is back because tickets will be even more limited and probably expensive.

as far as i know amazon and apple don’t use VR tech. melody/napster are the only offering… It’s more to do with adoption of the tech than anything else… i don’t think it will die to be honest, they are aiming to list on the nasdaq from what i’ve read and looking to take marketshare out of spotify…

played right there is huge potential.

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i suppose you’re referring to concert music… dead for now (probably back next year) - but this is where a lot more adoption could come about… instead of watching artist collabs where they sing out of tune over zoom… napster could kit out each colab artist and using VR / augmented reality and place them on a “stage” which could be watched by millions…

…i suppose what they need is this FT community running the show… we’d have napster wiping the floor with it’s competitors in no time! LOL

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You joke, but I actually completely agree with that. To give context, I’ll mention that I’m a main member of a fairly large rock band in the UK. Not Radiohead level or a household name, but known to music fans. My perspective is primarily from there.

Back when the company was just MelodyVR, I thought the entire model was a ludicrously bad idea. Next to no one is going to pay £10 for a single VR show that they can’t preview when there are so many free high quality YouTube performances. The artists on offer were limited too. MelodyVR just had it all wrong from the start, there needed to be an overwhelming amount of content to chose from that was free to access, even if it was poorer quality than the current videos.

Money should have been raised with a freemium model like Spotify or YouTube - free with ads or paid subscription with no ads. Asking consumers to spend a month’s Spotify/YouTube subscription on a SINGLE video of undetermined quality is never going to work. Making a video into VR doesn’t elevate the experience to the level of an in person performance either; you can’t feel the bass, smile and bond with likeminded strangers and smell the fumes of spilled beer. It’s a shared experience you can’t replicate. The company were fooling no one by marketing themselves as an alternative to live shows. Melody could have flourished under quarentine by hiring a venue, getting artists to do a performance and therefore they’d have the sole ownership of their own, exclusive, high quality performances that you can watch in VR. If they released the most popular song of each artist for free, they might have actually had people pay for the full show too.

But they didn’t, and I genuinely think that the managers and board members don’t have a clue about the industry they are getting into. It is free, all of it. You can’t charge people to listen to or watch music now. There are only luxury consumer goods like merchandise and signed vinyl.

But now the same clueless management have Napster and have immediately rebranded themselves as the company they’ve taken over. Napster is already known for it’s sense of community and for sharing music; if more artists start jumping on board, Napster could see it’s userbase double again, easily. Especially if MelodyVR is now used as an addition to Napster, I see it being easily capable of competing with Spotify on a level similar to where TIDAL is at currently. Artists would jump at the opportunity. Not only would they get paid more per stream, you help smaller artists get a foothold in the industry that we feel exceptionally lucky to be a part of.

But the question is whether the management are capable. I’ve been following Melody for ages because I’ve wanted confirmation that they’re shit, but now that they own Napster, I don’t know. It’s a golden opportunity, but can the useless suits pull it off? I bought in at £0.0245 so I’m in the green right now, hopefully that continues.

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Tidal is not really a serious threat to Spotify though. At the end of the day artists need to be where the fans are and the general public’s understanding of the finer details of music royalties is pretty low, so I can’t imagine fans jumping ship for this reason. Maybe for some indie artists with a really engaged audience base - but for everyone else reach and listening where your friends are will be more important

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I disagree, if someone like Taylor Swift was to simply tweet “I’m switching to Napster, it’s fairer to artists” then there would be a lot of people that look into it just from that. There’d also be enough artists that would perform exclusively for Napster even if they have a limited audience at the moment, they’d get paid on commission so they’d have nothing to lose. An hour long performance the day before a London show or something.

You’re right with Tidal of course, but I think it’s useful to consider when looking at Spotify competitors.

Also, with regards to where your friends are, do many people use music streaming as a social platform? Not sure. Napster has more in depth features that let’s you view the details of stranger’s listening habits, which I don’t think any other platform does.

Edit: I think what really made me commit to Napster was a mixture of the god awful share price of Melody and the endless possibilities of what could happen with the Napster name recognition

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Yes that would have an impact but that is a HUGE if.

Windowing music doesn’t work the same as having exclusivity for films (like with video streaming). Recorded music hasn’t ever really competed with live revenue for artists so as such from an artists point of view it’s like marketing to drive sales of tickets and merch. You don’t do this successfully and play the biggest venues you can by cutting off the majority of your reach. It’s in an artists interest to be everywhere they can be. Exclusivity in recorded music is good for platforms but bad for artists