Napster Interview - Part II

BetaNews: Napster Chief Technology Officer Bill Pence discusses his perspective about Apple, DRM and rival RealNetworks. From reading the interview there is no doubt the company’s focus is set squarely on the subscription side of the business and not on the a la carte side, but at the same time it’s a big believer in enabling choice. A competitive advantage that caught my eye was the fact that Napster lets you re-download any previously purchased track if you accidentally delete it or your hard drive crashes…(which is not the case with some other download stores.) Very cool.

DRM: “Over time, I don't believe that the industry will evolve to a "standard" DRM... Without the DRM we could not offer different business models like all-you-can-eat, or a la carte, or portable subscriptions.”

Apple: With respect to a question about following RealNetwork’s lead transcoding Apple’s Fairplay DRM,  "Apple has every right to decide when and how to license its software to others and they have decided not to license it. Whether or not that's a good decision or a bad decision for them I don't know, but it's certainly a legitimate business decision… It's just not in my mind consumer friendly to sell something to someone on the basis that it is compatible with a device when in fact it may no longer be compatible some time down the line.

Future: Our vision of Napster is that it is an "anywhere you are" music service. You go home, you power up through your TV and from your stereo, you access the music that you downloaded to your PC; you go into the car and you plug in a device; or you carry the device with you...In terms of expanding the reach of the platform, we continue to be focused on three main areas. These are: building out complete support in the living room so that Napster becomes the primary jukebox in the sky for accessing content over your traditional home stereo system in the home; portability with Napster To Go and automobile integrations are a big focus for us; and then mobile, cell phones and other devices. That all sounds promising, but at the end of the day, the music industry should collectively figure out a way to allow us to access all of our content from wherever we are using any device…That’s really where everything should end up to meet consumer's wants and needs.