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.
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.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.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?