New Napster Tunes Won't Play On iPod

With its relaunch on October 29th, Napster, the most notorious name in music downloads, will collide with the hottest music player on the market, the iPod. That's because music downloaded from Napster will not be playable on Apple's insanely popular iPod. The newly legal Napster service and the iPod use incompatible file formats.

The incompatibility problem may confuse customers and could detract from the success of the new service.

Mike McGuire, research director with GartnerG2, said that fiddling around with different file formats could be discouraging to consumers.

"If online music is going to require me to look at an option plan that is going to be as complex as your average cell-phone plan, none of this is going to work," said McGuire. "Online music, then, is still a niche.

"Until the majority of consumers decide which format they like the best, we're going to see the same struggle," he said.

Napster 2.0 is joining an ever-growing field of paid music services like Musicmatch and BuyMusic.com. These download services offer songs in Windows Media Audio, or WMA, format, the same format used by Napster.

Apple's iPod, on the other hand, encodes its songs using the Advanced Audio Coding, or AAC, specification. Napster's files, then, are incompatible with the iPod.

The clash between the two big names may not be of concern to Napster because Napster teamed with Samsung to sell a digital media player specifically designed to work with the Napster music service. The product will debut this fall.

And Apple likely feels the same way. Before the end of the year, Apple is launching its competing iTunes music store for Windows, which will sell songs that are compatible with the iPod.

Josh Bernoff, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said that Apple wants to use its upcoming music service as an incentive to sell iPods.

"The problem is that nobody can be compatible with an iPod without help from Apple," Bernoff said. "Apple has very little incentive to support that because they would rather sell iPods than support anyone else's device."

Forrester's Bernoff said Napster may have trouble building its business because it doesn't have a "natural constituency" that other services enjoy. MusicNet has support from AOL subscribers, Rhapsody enjoys an audience from RealNetworks, and iTunes is the natural destination for iPod users.

"It will be much harder for (Napster) to grow," he said.

Phil Leigh, an analyst with Inside Digital Media, said the incompatibility between Napster and iPod is a minor concern because most people just burn their digital music to CDs rather than using portable players.

"Most of the portability comes from burning CD-R media," said Phil Leigh, an analyst with Inside Digital Media. "There are 200 million CD burners in use right now, versus about 1 million iPods."

Napster 2.0 promises more than 500,000 tracks from the five major record labels and a smattering of independents. The service will offer consumers two choices: a la carte downloads à la Apple iTunes and a premium subscription service. The company would not provide further specifics on the new music service.

The original Napster was shut down in 2001 after an unsuccessful court battle with the music industry. Roxio, a company that makes CD- and DVD-burning software, bought the Napster name in November 2002 for $5 million. The company also acquired pressplay, an online music subscription service. Pressplay has since been shut down, and Napster 2.0 will take its place.

Napster website: napster.com.

iPod homepage: apple.com/ipod.

Story source: wired.com.