Monday, July 19, 2004
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6 More Colleges Sign Campuswide Deals With Napster to Offer Music DownloadsBy JEFFREY R. YOUNG
Six more colleges have signed deals with Napster to provide the company's online music service to their students, the company plans to announce today, in a move that college officials hope will reduce illegal music trading by offering a legal alternative. Other companies that offer similar music services, including CFlix and Ruckus Network, say they are also working with several colleges on campuswide deals that will begin this fall. The six new colleges signed up by Napster are Cornell University, George Washington University, Middlebury College, the University of Miami, the University of Southern California, and Wright State University. Each college's arrangement with the company varies. At Cornell, Middlebury, and Miami, all students will have free access to Napster's subscription music service, while at George Washington and Wright State, only students who live in dormitories will have free access to the service. At Southern Cal, students who want to use the music service will have to pay for it themselves, but at a greatly reduced rate (about $2 per month instead of the regular price of $9.95 per month). All of the programs will begin this fall. Napster's subscription service allows users to download any of 800,000 songs onto their computers, but those downloaded songs cannot be burned onto a CD or transferred to an iPod or other MP3 player. If students want to move their music to another format, they must buy the songs from Napster for 99 cents each. The service works on computers running Windows 2000 and XP, but not on Macintoshes or older versions of Windows. Officials at participating colleges and at Napster declined to specify the price of the deals. The colleges join a growing number that are buying songs for their students. Pennsylvania State University and the University of Rochester have signed similar deals with Napster, and four other colleges -- Duke, Wake Forest, and Yale Universities and the University of Colorado at Boulder -- have signed deals with CFlix, which offers a subscription service with music and movies. Student-Led Campaigns At many of the colleges, student demand was the strongest factor in the decision to join in. Vance Aloupis, a rising senior at Miami, ran for student-body president in February on a platform of bringing Napster to the campus. He won the election and promptly started doing his homework on the service's costs and benefits. "I researched and researched and researched," he said last week, noting that he called Napster officials for information and sent e-mail inquiries to Penn State students to see whether they liked the service. He met repeatedly with university officials to make his case, and in May he presented a white paper to the administration. At first Pat Whitely, Miami's vice president for student affairs, hesitated to spend university money on an entertainment service, she said. "I just didn't think it was as important a priority as the students ended up justifying." Part of what sold her was the students' enthusiasm as well as the hope that the service would reduce the amount of illegal song swapping. The students also pointed out that Napster could be a tool in music courses, with professors using it to assign audio homework. The university ended up signing a contract with Napster this month. Ms. Whitely said that student fees would not be raised to cover the cost. "I'm really impressed with how fast everything worked out," said Mr. Aloupis, who admits that he had doubts about whether he would be able to deliver on his campaign promise. "It was really a great win for our student government." The student government at Cornell was key to bringing free downloads there as well. "The Student Assembly unanimously voted to go forward with the pilot," said Kent L. Hubbell, dean of students. At Middlebury College the student government decided to spend its own activity fees to bring Napster to the campus. "The administration made a decision really early on that this was not something we could justify spending tuition dollars on," said David Donahue, associate dean of library and information services at Middlebury. "Our feeling was, this was primarily entertainment. But if students want it, and they're willing to spend student funds on it, that's something that we support." George Washington's administration was also reluctant to spend university money on Napster, said Linda J. Schutjer, the university's associate general counsel. "It was hard for us to say we should take student funds that might be going toward new buildings or new professors or something, and provide them with music," she said. The deal went through only after an anonymous donor offered to pay for the first year of service. "I think the kids are going to really enjoy it," she said. At Wright State the service will be financed with money from a student-technology fee, although officials say the fee has not been increased because of the deal. "We're providing it as part of our basic telecom services to our resident students," said Verne Smith, a senior desktop-software specialist at the university. He said off-campus students would be able to purchase a Napster subscription at a reduced rate, about $30 per academic year. Students are not the only group on campuses interested in music downloads. At Middlebury, officials plan to offer Napster subscriptions at a discount to faculty and staff members. "We haven't worked out the details," said Mr. Donahue, adding that he pays full price for Napster on his own. Competing to Sign Up Campuses And Napster is not the only company offering music services to colleges. Others in the market are busy signing up colleges this summer as well. Brett Goldberg, president and cofounder of CFlix, said his company hopes to sign deals with 10 to 15 colleges in the next few weeks for services that would start this fall. Two of the colleges signing with CFlix are Marietta College, in Ohio, and the Rochester Institute of Technology, he said. He would not name the other institutions because, he said, the deals were not final. Unlike Napster, CFlix offers movies for download as well as music. Colleges can subscribe to either the music or the movie services separately, or buy access to both. The company also offers an "educational media service" that lets students download educational video programming. Rochester plans to offer CFlix's music service to all students beginning this fall, but students will have to pay $2.99 per month if they want to use it, said Dave Pecora, operations manager for information and technology services at RIT. He said the institute will not pay anything to CFlix for the deal, but will provide staff time to install and support the music system. "We wanted to offer an alternative to illegal music sharing," said Mr. Pecora, "and one that was affordable to students but didn't cost the university a lot of money." Ruckus Network, another company offering online music services, has also been working with colleges. David Galper, cofounder and vice president for marketing at Ruckus, said the company "will be launching at a couple of schools this fall." One college working with Ruckus is Northern Illinois University, which will run a pilot test of the company's music service this fall in a dormitory complex that is home to some 1,500 freshmen and sophomores. Cindy J. Phillips, director of telecommunication services at Northern Illinois, said the university sees the service as a way to generate revenue for its telecommunication-services department down the road. This year the service will be free to students while officials try to gauge demand. If it is popular, a charge for the service might be assessed in the future. That's the same model universities have used for other services, such as long-distance telephone calling, said Ms. Phillips. "We're going to buy bulk from a vendor and resell with some markup to provide the application." Another strong reason to offer music in dormitories, said Ms. Phillips, is to discourage illegal file trading. "We could just ignore the issue and let them download as much as they wanted," said Ms. Phillips. "We really want to offer a legal alternative." A Pay-Per-Song Alternative Administrators at Virginia Tech, meanwhile, think that students may prefer buying songs individually to joining subscription services. Through a site license offered by Apple, the university will offer CD's that include the company's iTunes software to students this fall. Campus users will still have to pay 99 cents to download a song from the service. But Virginia Tech -- some of whose students were named in lawsuits filed this year by the Recording Industry Association of America -- hopes to show that it encourages students to explore legitimate music sharing, according to Mark Owczarski, a university spokesman. Even better, the deal cost the university nothing. Brock Read contributed to this article.
Background articles from The Chronicle:
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Copyright © 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education