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Napster deal means end of free music
By summer you'll be forced to pay fees to download tunes Shane McCune The Province; with News Services
National Post / Joshua Wasserman uses Napster to download music into his home computer over the Internet.
Time is running out for free music from Napster.
Starting in June or July, you'll have to "upload" a subscription fee before you can download music from the popular website.
"We carried out market research among 20,000 Napster users. The willingness to pay is given," Bertelsmann AG chairman Thomas Middelhoff said yesterday.
The German media company owns BMG, which signed a $50-million deal with Napster to develop a fee-based system. In exchange, BMG dropped its copyright-infringement lawsuit against the Internet service last October.
So far the subscription service will offer only songs by BMG artists, but Napster is in talks to enlist other record companies, including Sony, EMI Group, Warner Music and Universal.
The announcement may please some music publishers and artists such as Metallica, who consider "free" downloads theft.
But it remains to be seen whether Napster users -- including 2.8 million Canadians, according to a recent survey -- will pay the still-undetermined subscription fee or simply switch to other free music sources, such as Gnutella, Scour, MP3.com, Aimster and news groups.
Kevin Kane, co-frontman of Vancouver's Grapes of Wrath, believes Napster should offer two zones -- free and fee.
"If you want to download songs off the new Grapes of Wrath record, maybe there would be two songs available in the free zone and the rest in the paid zone," said Kane, an avid Napster user.
Even members of The Tragically Hip -- whose latest disc, Music@Work, was leaked on the Internet before its official release -- are not keen on Napster's plan.
"To clip the wings of the free interchange of creative and musical ideas over the Web is not a positive thing," said bassist Gord Sinclair.
Hugh Roberts, music department manager at A&B Sound in downtown Vancouver, said it's impossible to determine Napster's role in the recent slump in North American CD sales, let alone the consequences of the subscription scheme.
"I don't think it's Napster that's doing anything horrible to music," he said yesterday. "It's just been a lousy couple of years for music."
Jack Schuller is president of Vancouver's Festival Distribution, a small independent specializing in folk and roots music. He said free downloads haven't hurt his artists that much, and subscription fees aren't likely to help them.
"The music that we distribute is more album-oriented," so fans aren't as likely to download single songs, he said. But he added that the people hurt most by digital pirating -- small-time songwriters who depend on royalties from CD sales -- probably won't benefit from Napster revenues as much as big stars like Bryan Adams.
"The Other Issue Is . . . People Getting the Idea That Intellectual Property Has No Value," Schuller Said. "That Is the Core of the Thing That Makes Me Uncomfortable With Napster."
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