I already own an iPod mini, and if/when Apple releases an 80gb iPod I’ll be right there to scoop it up. Currently I’ve got 7,644 songs on my hard drive occupying 57.7 gb.
But now Napster is preparing to unveil a new ad campaign with an interesting message — I’d have to be an idiot to buy an iPod. Napster chief Chris Gorog told Forbes,
We’re going to be communicating to people that it’s stupid to buy an iPod.
Part of what’s going on there is Napster’s claim that you can fill your music player with 10,000 tracks for $15/month at Napsters vs. buying 10,000 tracks from ITMS which would cost roughly $10,000.
I don’t have any interest in buying songs at ITMS either, but at least those 10,000 songs don’t simply expire the second you decided to stop buying from ITMS, whereas all those 10,000 songs are rendered worthless once you stop paying Napster its $15/month fee (or Napster goes out of business, stranding its customers).
The irony, of course, is that most of the people I know with iPods have them filled with MP3s. Moreover, most of the MP3s they have tend to be illegally acquired from P2P services that Napster pioneered. I prefer to simply buy used CDs and rip them.
But I think Napster has the cart before the horse. Napster seems to think that the MP3 player market is driven by download services, and that people choose which player they’re going to buy based on the download service they’re using.
That’s rubbish, IMO. People are buying players based on their preferences and then subscribing to the download service that will work with their device and offers the music/price they’re looking for.
The iPod is still simply the best MP3 player of its type available. The design of both the iPod and iTunes are amazingly easy to use which is why even the Wintel-centric people I know tend to have iPods.