Saturday, March 05, 2005

Napster to Go versus iTunes

I'm sure you've all seen Napster's "Do the Math" campaign on TV. The ads purport that the combination of the Napster to Go subscription service and .mp3 players other than the iPod are more economical than Apple's iTunes.

It goes something like this:

10,000 iTunes songs + iPod 40GB = $10,000.

X number of songs from about a million hosted on Napster to Go + 40GB .mp3 player = $15.00 a month.

Now, I'll admit that I'm a softie for Apple at heart, but I think Napster's commercials are misleading as hell. So, with that in mind, here are some interesting facts for friends who ask "What's so great about iTunes and the iPod?"

-You can listen to any number Napster songs for 55 years (or 666 months) for $10,000.00. You can listen to 10,000 iTunes songs forever for $10,000. This is assuming that you don't have any money sunk into CDs already.

-For those who don't own any CDs, they're gonna hve to pony up for broadband. Napster to Go won't fit through a modem.

-Napster's songs stop playing when you stop paying. Then you're stuck with an .mp3 player that isn't an iPod. And if you do join the ranks of iPod users, you can't listen to any of that $15.00/mo. music.

-iTunes lets you transcode music you buy to a CD for easy listening on 15-year-old CD players with minimal quality loss. I hope you like that ugly-ass Dell DJ, because Napster's service won't let you listen to your music on anything else, including CD players.

-Apple's commercials feature hot dancers and new music, from which you may learn to bust a move or two. Napster's commercials feature...a cartoon cat with headphones and some invalid equations.

-Apple got famous designing great computers and software. Napster got cool because it was an application for stealing music.

I plan to live forever and I won't be seen with a music player that isn't an iPod, so I'm going with iTunes.
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http://homepage.mac.com/vought

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