LOS ANGELES (Napster/Roxio press release) - Napster, a division of Roxio, announced today it has forged progressive agreements with a diverse group of some of the nation's leading colleges and universities to provide access to the biggest brand in online music. Cornell University, The
George Washington University, Middlebury College in Vermont, University of Miami, The University of Southern California and the Wright
State University (Ohio) will all work with Napster to create campus-specific programs providing their students access to Napster's compelling subscription service and huge 800,000-digital song catalog, with the primary goals of combating peer-to-peer music piracy, conserving university bandwidth costs and protecting intellectual property. Penn
State University and University of Rochester were the first to join Napster's university program this past winter. Based on the success of the program at Penn State, the school will expand the offering this fall so students at all 23 campuses can participate.
In establishing these agreements, the schools have been working closely with the Campus Action Network (CAN), an initiative dedicated to facilitating the introduction of safe, legitimate digital music services to the campus environment. CAN, which is led by Sony Music Entertainment and other record companies, works with a wide range of legitimate online music services, and helps institutions to create programs that uniquely fit their needs, as well as the needs of their student bodies.
Napster has worked with each institution to create a program that uniquely fits its needs as well as the needs of its student body. All the schools will offer Napster's subscription service, featuring unlimited streaming and hard drive downloading from the world's largest digital music library, as well as access to interactive, commercial-free radio stations, six decades of Billboard's historic chart information and an online magazine. Napster gives university students the opportunity to be part of an online community of music lovers who can send tracks to friends, share play lists and look at other members' music collections in a safe, legal environment. Students still have the option to purchase music to burn to CD or transfer to over 75 compatible portable devices for 99 cents per song or as little as $9.99 per album.
"These colleges and universities are focused on providing their students with a great service that offers a legal and ethical alternative to peer-to- peer file sharing while reducing their school networks' exposure to the viruses, spyware, bandwidth drain and other technical problems that use of p2p services bring," said Chris Gorog, chairman and CEO of Napster and Roxio. "Napster offers the digital music experience that most closely resembles that of p2p sites, but in a legal setting so collegiate music fans can access over three-quarters of a million on-demand tracks in a cool, high quality, legal environment."
In partnering with Napster, Cornell, GW, Middlebury, Miami, USC and Wright State hope to give students a simple and fun way to obtain and listen to music in compliance with copyright laws and to promote respect for intellectual property. Specific technological implementation will vary from campus to campus, and may include implementation of Napster and IBM's "Super Peer" application, which caches the most popular Napster content on on-site IBM servers managed remotely by Napster. "Super Peer" is designed to reduce campus' external bandwidth utilization, deliver music instantly on demand and provide advanced quality and security to optimize university network resources and reduce system vulnerability.
"Penn State's students have been thrilled with the Napster experience, downloading as many as 100,000 songs each day," said Graham Spanier, president, Pennsylvania State University. "We see our Napster implementation as central to our effort to create a more student-centered university while at the same time offering an alternative to music piracy and copyright infringement. I'm delighted that so many universities are about to provide their students with a first class online music service and commend them utilizing Napster's high quality, user-friendly and legal solution."
The fall roll out across these additional institutions and Penn State locations will provide access to Napster for over 150,000 undergrad and graduate students, with most schools planning to make the service available to all students whether on- or off-campus. Several of the schools plan to activate a separate auxiliary program to offer Napster to alumni, parents, faculty and staff. Both Penn State and University of Rochester's groundbreaking selection of Napster as their official digital music service has helped curb illegal sharing of copyrighted files over their high-speed data networks. Napster expects these latest additions to its university program to see similar results.
Several schools conducted student surveys and testing before choosing to implement Napster. Cornell's decision to implement Napster was spurred by the school's student government, who tested the service before unanimously voting in favor of allowing access for the entire student body on a one-year trial basis.
"Napster simply outperformed our expectations," said Nicholas John Linder, former student assembly president, Cornell University. "In our role representing the student body, we needed to find a university-wide solution to online piracy and dispel the common fear of looming lawsuits. Napster offers a unique blend of a name students recognize, a broad music library that appeals to every taste and community features that let you discover new music and share your favorites with friends."
