digital music/video
07/27/2005, 5:10pm, EDT
Wednesday, July 27th
University receives huge discount with music deal
The University of Washington was offered a signficant discount as part of the details revealed in its online music deal with Dell and Napster, which would "force-feed" students the Napster music service and leave owners of the most popular MP3 player, the iPod, to buy their music elsewhere, according to The Register. Supported by public funds, the university was forced to release the financial details of the agreement, which revealed that UW will pay Napster $24,000 for 8 months of service, about $2 per student for 1,500 students--much less than the typical charge of $10-$15 per month. In addition, Dell will contribute $24,000 for another 1,500 kids as well as offer $53,000 worth of servers, as part of the agreement.
"Under the provisions the University must exclusively promote the Dell branded DJ, secure two Dell kiosks on campus to feature Dell products and services, facilitate a Dell launch event in the back-to-school timeframe, host Dell information on the UW website, execute an email campaign and participate in a case study." Earlier this month we reported the agreement between Dell and Napster.
Filed under: industry
Other story tags: digital music/video
,
, 14
,
,
,
,
,

subscribe to comments
for this article
As for legality of the deal itself, I suspect it is legal, at least in the opinion of UW's legal folks; these kinds of deals are done all the time. Mostly, though they're for administrative systems.
My own university has such a partnership in place with Gateway for computers, meaning that generic workstation PC's are supposed to go through Gateway unless you have written justification. Mac purchases are exempt from this rule.
This also doesn't straightjacket students, though Gateway is giving us some fairly significant discounts for student and faculty/staff personal purchases as well, and Gateway is giving back in terms of equipment and funding for a variety of things.
(Note, Apple was one of the several companies approached for this partnership deal. I can see why they declined, but it would have been cool to be on a Mac-mandatory campus ;-)
I personally think this one is stupid, counterproductive and a waste of money. The only thing driving this is fear of the RIAA.
Certainly grounds for a lawsuit were I a Washington taxpayer or student, particularly if I were forced to pay for a music service I couldn't use.
And another question...I'm going to assume some students will have Macs. Are they to be left out in the cold with no benefit from the University spending all that money?