Sad but true: Napster '99 still smokes Spotify 2012 • Hacker News Board

Re: Sad but true: Napster '99 still smokes Spotify 2012

#31

Post by psychotik » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 3:52 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #29

psychotik wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, if you like discovery try Audiogalaxy Mixes - we just launched it a week or so ago [1]. We think it's better than Pandora (much larger catalog, smarter algos, more input types) - tell me if it's not. It's free on the web (no ads) with a free trial on mobile, after which we charge a small fee to cover licensing costs. If you email viraj@audiogalaxy.com with your account I'll comp you a free month. I'd love to kno…

Ahhhh. Audiogalaxy. That brings back memories. It was amazing back in it's (less legitimate) days. It took over from Napster but improved on it in many ways.

It's evolved and we're trying to re-create some of the same magic, with the same team. First step: http://gigaom.com/2012/03/05/audiogalaxy-personalized-p2p-ra...

Re: Sad but true: Napster '99 still smokes Spotify 2012

#32

Post by a15i » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 4:04 PM UTC

don't you get it, he only wants some publicity time to time? the content of the news is not important, the important bit is that it gets circulated, which it sadly has been circulated here in hackernews.

and so was that ruby gut called why or whatever, a few days ago in hackernews.

sad but true: just like people in middle east are not culturally ready for democracy, people in advanced countries are not intelligent enough to not to create hype for free for random individuals.

Re: Sad but true: Napster '99 still smokes Spotify 2012

#33

Post by xpose2000 » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 4:04 PM UTC

Napster was cool because it had live music and bootlegs that are often times very tough to find. A lot of napster was sifting through crap songs to find the good versions.

Spotify and the others are cool because you can stream stuff while on your phone. And getting to the music you want to hear was more seamless and straightfoward.

So in summary, almost, but not quite.

Napster was also one of the first geek-tools to really hit mainstream, and boy was that weird.

Re: Sad but true: Napster '99 still smokes Spotify 2012

#34

Post by link2009 » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 4:26 PM UTC

maukdaddy wrote: post #22

brianwhitman wrote: post #21

I disagree with this -- i was a very heavy Napster user in 99 and am a very heavy Spotify user (and, NB, they are a customer) today. Obviously it's a fun angle for a SXSW talk, but: - The "depth of catalog" is actually incorrect -- Spotify has far far more songs than Napster did (you can see in that screenshot even, most logins/servers hit less than 1m songs totally available, and of course those are just total index…

Oh wow hotline, that brings back some memories. On a university network Napster was quite fast. I could routinely saturate my (for that time speedy) 10mbit connection, especially to other clients on Internet2. One other point to your argument is social. The ability to see what friends are listening to and create sharable playlists is obviously something that Napster did not provide.

You had Internet2 in '99?

Re: Sad but true: Napster '99 still smokes Spotify 2012

#35

Post by funkah » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 4:28 PM UTC

Cloud music services are too limited, and all they get you is not having to store your music on a device you carry around with you all the time anyway.

Re: Sad but true: Napster '99 still smokes Spotify 2012

#36

Post by benmccann » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 4:35 PM UTC

link2009 wrote: post #34

maukdaddy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow hotline, that brings back some memories. On a university network Napster was quite fast. I could routinely saturate my (for that time speedy) 10mbit connection, especially to other clients on Internet2. One other point to your argument is social. The ability to see what friends are listening to and create sharable playlists is obviously something that Napster did not provide.

You had Internet2 in '99?

I was curious, so from Wikipedia: The Internet2 Project was originally established by 34 university researchers in 1996 under the auspices of EDUCOM (later EDUCAUSE), and was formally organized as the not-for-profit University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID) in 1997.

Re: Sad but true: Napster '99 still smokes Spotify 2012

#37

Post by tjoff » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 4:37 PM UTC

bitterfounder0 wrote: post #26

e03179 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RE: slow downloads thru Napster Of course, high speed internet is much more prevalent now in 2012 than it was in '99. Downloading an album in '99 sometimes meant you were downloading from PC's with only a 56k modem for connectivity.

Good point. It's not fair to associate Napster with slow download speeds. I would have loved to see how Napster evolved with broadband. Tragic they were shutdown.

In countries such as Sweden that was already the case. I never downloaded anything on napster in 56k-speed unless I was really desperate. Broadband was common enough that limiting yourself to high-speed downloads didn't limit the supply, which was kind of obvious considering that those with broadband typically had many orders of magnitude larger libraries :p

Re: Sad but true: Napster '99 still smokes Spotify 2012

#38

Post by icebraining » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 4:53 PM UTC

psychotik wrote: post #30

icebraining wrote: post #2

But the "evil" aspect of Napster wasn't that it was P2P: it was that it didn't return any money to the creators. No, it's because it forfeited the control the labels had over the music. They've showed again and again that they don't mind losing money to maintain that control.

P2P is just technology. Making it work so that the right people are compensated is hard. My startup is trying - http://www.gigaom.com/2012/03/05/audiogalaxy-personalized-p2... . This just launched a week or so ago - give it a shot!

Thanks for the suggestion and I hope you'll succeed, but frankly I can't; assuming you're giving a cut of your income to the big labels, I'd be contributing to companies that actively lobby to destroy things I hold dear.

Nowadays I only buy music that I'm reasonably sure it won't feed the RIAA.

Re: Sad but true: Napster '99 still smokes Spotify 2012

#39

Post by icebraining » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 4:55 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #27

icebraining wrote: post #2

But the "evil" aspect of Napster wasn't that it was P2P: it was that it didn't return any money to the creators. No, it's because it forfeited the control the labels had over the music. They've showed again and again that they don't mind losing money to maintain that control.

But they have already lost that power and are never going to get it back again.

SOPA proves they don't agree with you, unfortunately.

Re: Sad but true: Napster '99 still smokes Spotify 2012

#40

Post by gebe » Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 4:59 PM UTC

jchrisa wrote: post #5

mds101 wrote: post #4

So just because Napster had built in chat and a wider illegal catalogue it becomes better than Spotify eh? Also, why would I want to know the personality of some ramdom guy on the other side of my p2p connection? This is mostly a fluff piece with absolutely nothing new or interesting being said.

I thought browsing other folks libraries was pretty cool. As an artist, I'd look myself up, and see what else those people listened to. Pretty neat and I've yet to come across anything similar. I haven't had to the time to investigate the other p2p music platforms since then, so probably others have that feature...

I didn't understand that point completely from the article though. Spotify lets you look at what other users listen to and their playlists (if they haven chosen to show them to the public) and I can subscribe to those playlist as well. The thing I guess they talk about is that you can't see who listens to a specific artist, you won't be able to get a huge list of usernames that listen to a certain artist. I guess they keep those goodies for themselves ;)