Napster Goes After Apple iTunes
Blatantly attack Apple until market share declines just a few points. That’s the name of the game. Desperation. Napster is following suit, today they launched a flat rate all-you-can-eat music service for $15/month they’ve been testing for a while.
They plan to launch an aggressive ad campaign, targeting the Apple + Pepsi sponsorship that’s planned to take off on Super Bowl sunday. The ad which also will air Sunday, is said to “compare spending $10,000 on iTunes for 10,000 tracks, while on Napster it would be $15”.
If anyone reading this listens to 10,000 tracks in one month… wow. I guess… this service is for you. You sort of deserve it. I guess. But if it’s not (which I’m assuming it won’t be for 99.9% of the people reading this) – Napster doesn’t have a lot of options left. They’ve reportedly spent $30 million on this ad campaign which includes the Super Bowl ad.
Don’t they know what they’re doing? Companies have tried this before, it just doesn’t work. People like owning their music. At least that’s the word on the street. The word on the street isn’t always in the know, so you can’t necessarily trust that.
How would you feel if you build up a list of some 500 songs you got off this service, one day you just don’t feel like paying the $15 anymore and then you realize you’re sort of SOL because you’re actually renting the music. How cool.
If anything, attacking Apple straight on, even naming iTunes in their commercial, they’ll end of giving Apple even more publicity. Like they need it.
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Guest Columnist Jesse Perry blogs on AppleWatch, the definative Apple News Blog.
