Feelings on Napster?

Oh yeah. 64 million people use napster. If napster were hurting the industry then man we would seriously see it by now with this many users. Yeah sales are down a bit but they have normal market fluctuation like that all the time. I still see tons of people in the cd stores and I can gaurantee you they all have computers and they all have napster. And besides now maybe the record companies will think twice about putting out crappy one hit wonder cd's and charging an exorbant price for it while that one song is hot. yeah they promote it like crazy like the whole cd is the best thing in the world and make killer sales on it while the bands name is the "hottest" thing out there. No more getting caught in that trap anymore for me. The record companies only let the radio stations and mtv play the one good song on the album for the first few months or so for this very reason.

Kacz: You said it prefectly - and that's why the record companies had better stop complaining and find a way to deal with it. How about cutting the prices of new CDs instead of raising them? Another method could be on-line direct sales. There's a jazz label, OkkaDisc, which has their entire catalog available on-line and way cheaper than at any store or on-line vendor. But that's just wishful thinking - they'll just raise prices and come with some godawful watermarking scheme - less sound, more money.

I agree Ralph, and btw, what did you think of my response to Pghedge?

Carl: Your response was a bit over the top and you may even be correct. The music industry has survived plenty of "scares" - radio broadcast, MTV, home taping, live taping, etc. I've heard some really poor sounding live recordings that only a true fan would want to hear, let alone own. And I'm sure that there's plenty garbage out there on Napster that I wouldn't download, let alone buy. And what the heck are we doing in this tread discussing such a lo-fi format while the powers that be are busy gearing up for yet another format war (SACD vs. DVD Audio) and another round of us replacing all our Beatles recordings.

Ralph: Oh, I see, so you don't use Napster much at all, then? WHY ARE YOU COMMMENTING HERE, IF YOU HAVE LITTLE EXPERIENCE WITH IT? I enjoy using it, and could give a rat's keester about the "format wars". There's no "war", because NONE of them will gain wide acceptance as long as the general public can still buy CD's for less $, and download music for free off the internet. And, my above response was NOT over the top at all, thank ya very much...it was perfectly in keeping with who I was responding to. Good day, and have fun fighting your little format war...the general populace doesn't care, and we all know what happens to formats that are only supported by those handfuls of audiophiles in the world (they die). How many new release Quadrophonic LP titles have you bought lately? "It's about the music, and not gadgets"...and "Keep it real".....Carl