Students refuse to buy a single song from Napster

To Napster's credit, University of Rochester students do embrace the streaming and tethered download aspects of the service. A healthy 47 per cent of students added a song they liked to their streaming playlist, while another 39 per cent acquired a tethered download. This helps explain why students would be reluctant to purchase a song, since they have ready access to the music at no additional charge.

Such positives fail to impress though as Apple nears 500m songs downloaded from iTunes and generates almost as much revenue in one day off the iPod as Napster makes in an entire quarter.

For Napster's college ventures to result in long-term success, it must overwhelm the students with the quality of the service. And, in fact, the vast majority of kids at Rochester find Napster's software very easy to use. Even so, 56 per cent of the students use other services than Napster even though they receive Napster "for free." In addition, many students complained about Napster's Windows-only approach, its lack of selection and its DRM policies - not to mention their continued fondness for P2P applications.

Those schools that add the cost of Napster to students' fees are grumbling about the service as well.

Middlebury College, for example, published a damaging expose in a school paper after the institution decided to re-up its Napster trial.

"While Napster refuses to let schools discuss the program's cost with students, The Campus has learned that the SGA (student government association) allocated $10,000 this year for Napster and is predicting an annual cost of $20,000 to continue the offering Napster next year," reported Ben Salkowe, in the Middlebury Campus. "Although only 50 percent of the campus uses the Napster service, all students pay for it through the SAF (student activities fee), an annual $220 fee which all students are required to pay for funding of student organizations.

"The actual cost of providing service for every student is believed to have been just under $40,000, however an unidentified outside sponsor paid part of the costs, and not all students took advantage of the service. None of the students or administrators involved in the agreement would name the sponsor - some of the program's extreme critics believe the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sponsors Napster college programs in their first year to encourage well-known schools to join the program."

A disconcerting aspect about many of the Napster college deals is that the schools are paying for the service now during trial periods and then saying they will bill the students an undetermined amount should they buy in for the long haul. Napster refuses to allow the schools to reveal how much they pay for the service - even at publicly funded state schools - and could theoretically raise the price well over these cut rate trials in the years to come. This means Napster could be laying the groundwork for a very expensive future - bad news for parents who must already spend up to $160,000 for top four-year schools like Middlebury.

Schools such as Penn State have equated charging students for a music shop with billing them for bus services and computer labs. Surely parents would prefer to shell out for actual learning devices than to make sure their children can receive a tethered download of the latest Britney Spears album?

Are parents pleased to see the record labels push these schools to open music stories with threats of lawsuits hanging over the kiddos' heads? Are they aware this is going on? Let us know.

In the meantime, check out the Rochester survey (PDF) for yourself. ®

Related stories

Napster, Dell cash-in on student DRM tax
Grokster: Confusing sin and sinner
How the music biz can live forever, get even richer, and be loved
Apple lovers start attack against Cornell's Napster trial
More red ink spills all over online college music scene
What went wrong at Wright State when Napster arrived
More universities agree to RIAA/Napster 'protection'
Napster gags university over RIAA's student tax
Tennessee rejects Napster/RIAA tax