The Shrine

It seems Napster is losing money (according to their Wikipedia article). I suppose it would be too much to hope that if the service is cancelled I'd actually be able to keep all the songs I got from it.

I know there's always the underlying infrastructure costs but selling music online seems like very difficult to actually lose money on. Is there an explanation on why they're losing money?

Not one I've seen, but I haven't really looked that hard.

I told you to Fuck Napster a long time ago.

Don Wang wrote:I know there's always the underlying infrastructure costs but selling music online seems like very difficult to actually lose money on. Is there an explanation on why they're losing money?

Big surprise: nobody like their stupid "rental" model, so they are going under. Yes, it is hard to believe that somebody is actually losing money on online music, but there you go. If they did things right, this wouldn't happen. I'm sure Rhapsidy is experiencing a similar situation, especially if enough people read the fine print.

Well, shit. We'd agreed that I would always do what you say, because you're always right, and I completely forgot. My bad!

Good. I'm glad you understand :)

Clever repartee, Mister Bond. But can you defeat my legion of evil henchmen?

Don Wang wrote:I know there's always the underlying infrastructure costs but selling music online seems like very difficult to actually lose money on. Is there an explanation on why they're losing money?

Don't underestimate maintaince cost, they can pile up quite high. Together with daily expenses such as electricity, ISP cost etc, any online application can cause a significant dent to a company's earnings.