Students Refuse to Buy From Napster

The Register: Napster has put a new twist on the notion of being a "loss leader" in the a la carte market. It's actually managed to sell more songs for rival online music services than for its own product - according to a recent survey. Not a single University of Rochester student admitted to buying a song via Napster during the Fall 2004 semester. Instead, eight per cent of the students turned to the likes of iTunes and Musicmatch to buy songs they enjoy. Ouch! Many students aksi complained about Napster's Windows-only approach, its lack of selection and its DRM policies - not to mention their continued fondness for P2P applications...It's not all bad news though...University of Rochester students do embrace the streaming and tethered download aspects of the service though...47 per cent of students added a song they liked to their streaming playlist, while another 39 per cent acquired a tethered download. (To be fair, one school's findings of 343 responses do not necessarily reflect the tastes and preferences of other schools or college students in general - but the survey does have some relevant significance no matter how you weight it.)