Roxio's got a brand new pig bag

[CityK]

Roxio has divested its software division and changed their name to Napster. Company execs were quoted as saying "we're either going to die filthy rich or run the company into the ground while trying"....okay, nobody (officially) said that but me.

Anyways, it will be interesting to see if [maritime imagery] the good ship Napster can take some wind out of Apple's sails, or if its going to sink straight back to the watery grave from which it came [/maritime imagery].

Hopefully Sonic will make use of this opportunity to rid the world of Easy Cremator once and for all.

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/10288

 

[Mercutio]

OK, this is about seven different kinds of dumb.

Actually, I'm not sure what business Roxio was in prior to this - I dimly recall it owning some multimedia-editing software, besides its craptacular burning and backup software which itself was largely rendered irrelevant by XP's features list.

But... the market for digital music is essentially saturated by better services (Rhapsody, which has a streaming playlist service in addition to for-pay downloads), cheaper downloads (Walmart) and better products (sad to say, iTunes is the best of the bunch, with non-lossy file formats and pain-free burning). All Napster has is a name.

So they throw away real products, products no one actually wanted, granted, but real products, to have a name and a sea of red ink in a market that's really strangled by RIAA price-fixing - RIAA gets $.50 out of every download according to Apple.

Me? I think going into digital music services is going to be right up there with Land War in Asia on the "error in judgement" list.

 

[cquinn]

Roxio was created as a spin-off of Adaptecs software division, back in
the days thier main product was still called EZ-CD creator.

On of their more stellar moves was buying out WinOnCD from a German company, then promptly killing support for it in the U.S.

I've found nothing in XP's feature list which rendered Easy CD irrelevant.
The CD burning capabilities of XP (IME) were even worse than Roxio's.
The real benefit they had was in encouraging others to look at Nero, and
others as alternative burning apps.

BTW, this purchase deal was made with Sonic Solutions http://www.sonic.com; not to be mistaken for Sonic Foundry
http://www.sonicfoundry.com , which sold thier software division to Sony a few months ago.

That will give Sonic Solutions marketshare for Recordnow and Easy CD/DVD applications.



[/url]

 

[Mercutio]

Roxio owned GoBack, which was largely useless in the face of XP's System Restore functionality.
XP also has the ability to burn data files to CD and CD-RW, and also to make music CDs (granted, crappy ones that have to be converted to lossy, DRM-laden WMA format first) with Media Player 8. If XP could outright copy a CD, it'd be fine for almost anyone, because that's the majority of what Easy CD Creator - and for that matter Nero - can do.

 

[sechs]

Roxio was a doomed company from the start... but this is just ridiculous.

 

[Santilli]

I should have known better. I bought a couple versions of their software,
IIRC, one for mac, and one for PC, and they didn't work real well.

Gave up on em, until I got the bundle with the LaCie-Liteon external CR-RW's, one version 5, and one version 6.

They both work :eekers: :excl: :excl:
Even better then the software bundled with the Sony DVD 530A that I'm using.

Weird. Now, they are going out of business...

Wonderful...

s

 

[EdwardK]

Where is Gary when you need him :wink: I remember Gary telling his wonderful "war stories" about Easy CD-Cremator back the days when he was using it before Adapatec/Roxio bought it from Corel.
The problem with me is that Easy CD-Creator OEM version is bundled with the computers at work. This creates uncertainty about upgrades and support for me.

Cheers,
Edward

 

[Mercutio]

I know profit margins are thin enough already, but if you REALLY worry about it, an OEM copy of Nero is available for just about every drive in the universe and costs all of about $3.

 

[EdwardK]

Thanks Merc.

I am seriously considering moving every computer at work that has a burner, over to Nero. It had been years since I had installed Easy CD-Cremator on any of my home computers.

Cheers,
Edward