Introduction The Napster brand has had a varied history. Its initial incarnation was as the first widely used service for ‘ free’ peer-to-peer (P2P) music sharing. The record companies mounted a legal challenge to Napster due to lost revenues on music sales which eventually forced it to close. But the Napster brand was purchased and its second incarnation offers a legal music download service in direct competition with Apple’s iTunes.
Now, internet is very well developed all of the world.
Following huge amount of people are conditioned to live with the internet, the internet lives of people are more and more wonderful. As an oversea student, I use internet everyday cause I’m away from my family. This topic is very interesting because it’s very close to me and I will tell my thoughts from my life.
And following separate part, I will talk about the success factor and the work which Napster did. Marketing Mix Evaluation of Napster
The series of seven key variables- Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process and Physical evidence- that are varied by marketers as part of the customer offering. And in the following paragraph, I will evaluate each of 7P’s of Napster. Product * Music Downloads (Legal rights to 500, 000 songs) * CD Burning * View Music Videos * Access Billboard Chart Information * Synchronize music to other devices * Message Boards * Detailed Artist and Album information * Parental Controls * Powerful Recommendation Engine Personal Inboxes for Music and Messages * Ability to Browse Other Users Music Collections * Search Engines by Genre, Artist, Track Title, or Popularity * Complimentary products such as digital recording media, CDs and MP3 players * Ability to Send Music to Friends within or outside the service * Access to Professionally Programmed Radio Stations Napster was initially created between 1998 and 1999 by a 19-year-old called Shawn Fanning while he attended Boston’s Northeastern University.
He wrote the program initially as a way of solving a problem for a friend who wanted to find music downloads more easily online. The name “ Napster” came from Fanning’s nickname.
The system was known as peer-to-peer since it enabled music tracks stored on other internet user’s hard disks in MP3 format to be searched and shared with other internet users. Strictly speaking, the service was not a pure P2P since central services indexed the tracks available and their locations in a similar way to which instant messaging work. All these product and service are very absorbing.
Promotion * Promote through partnerships with Microsoft, Gateway, Yahoo and Samsung * Partnerships with XM Satellite Radio, Tower Records in Japan, a marketing agreement with BellSouth Corp. of Atlanta * Possible partnership to rollout with cell phones on LM Ericsson of Stockholm Actually, before I read this case study, I never heard the name of Napster. I’ve done a searching test.
I used Google searching engine and entered “ music download”, from the first three pages, I can’t find any page about Napster. And I try to visit MP3 Players merchants, like: www. apple. om, www. creative. com, www.
iriver. com and so on. I still can’t find any trace about Napster. I don’t think Napster do nice work on his promotion. Price From the Napster website, Explore a world of new music with unlimited streaming from 10 million songs. Plus each month download 5 MP3s to keep, playable on all devices.
All for just ? 5 a month. That means I have to pay 5 bonds for downloading 5 songs and play all songs online freely. I feel this is good for people who want to listen to music at home, but not the people who want to play music on his own Ipod. Place
