AfterDawn: News

Dell and Napster target colleges

Campus networks' performance suffers heavily from the traffic load generated by students downloading pirated content. Networks are running out of bandwidth, while universities and colleges are trying various approaches to tackle the problem.

Dell and Napster are trying to bring the mountain closed to Mohammed in order to lure more students to legal downloads, and save campus bandwidth in the process. Somehow I just have the feeling that this would have worked a lot better with iTunes, but can't blame Napster for not trying.

Napster (nasdaq: NAPS - news - people ) will make its entire music library available to cache, or store, on Dell servers at colleges and universities that participate in the program. The songs will be available on systems locally, on systems managed by Dell, so there will be minimal impact on bandwidth.

Source: Forbes

Written by: Lasse Penttinen @ 6 Jul 2005 12:10

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• 8 comments

• Spiridon

  This is the most useless thing that I have ever heard...
  
  Why would someone want their music to be stored on a server, maybe just for back up but just that. If they do store and play it from the server then this will lower the internet port, but will raise the LAN usage a lot.
  
  And then it is the question if ALL music can be upload, or only DRM'd tracks. Because if that is so then this makes even less sense, since you can't share it around.
  
  This project just asks to be failed.
  
  Besides, every universitry and college already have 1 or more dump sites. Dell and Napster can't compete with those ;)

  6.7.2005 14:01 #1

• Spiridon

  Ok, I wanted to edit my post but seems I can't.. Or maybe I am just blind, either way.
  
  Just had a good look at the source as well it is napster's music archive they will cache/store...
  
  But still that doesnt change much unless they also give those college kids a college price. Say, 10 cents a song since thats all they can afford... I mean I knew some guys who are in college, and they eat instant noodles, or instant lasangia or instant whatever everyday becuase they can't pay for anything more fancy.
  
  So if they can't even buy proper food, why should they be able to pay for the music they are offered to download?
  
  Like I said, this project is doomed and will not pay back the investments Dell and Napster (and maybe also the colleges/universities) made.

  6.7.2005 14:10 #2

• rihgt682

  geeee

  6.7.2005 16:48 #3

• Kingbug

  Being a student at Penn State, they already do this. What they due is they let students stream music for free. We can listen to the preset stations or pick individual songs and listen to them or add them to our library. We still have to pay to download but we can still listen to almost any music without ever downloading the song. I use it, but I use it to listen to music before I download it so I don't waste downloading stuff that sucks.

  6.7.2005 17:39 #4

• rihgt682

  wow

  6.7.2005 18:02 #5

• Spiridon

  Kingbug, so how do you download the song that you like then? Station/Stream ripper or something?
  
  If it is free to stream the audio then it might be pretty cool indeed. But still, it will not make a huge profit for them.

  7.7.2005 02:25 #6

• Kingbug

  You would download it like normal on Napster.
  I think the main point of this article is that Dell is going to help provide the servers that the songs are stored on and streamed from.

  7.7.2005 09:01 #7

• duckNrun

  basically it sounds like a music subscription service to me (i.e yahoo music). Which concept in and of itself is an interesting idea-- if they have the vast majority of music someone really wants to listen to. Pay a small fee each month listen to a whole catalog of music for free as much as you like. No downloading, no stealing.. you get the music you want legally. As I said I think it's an interesting concept (albeit not a new one lol). I'm just not sure if you could expect to transfer those 'rented' songs to an Ipod or an mp3 cd for portable use, which if not, then reveals the ultimate problem/failure with this particular concept.
  
  btw.. anyone currently using a subscription based music 'store'? if so please offer a review with the pro's and con's.
  
  

  10.7.2005 12:00 #8