The results are in and it's no contest: Napster is crushing Metallica in online popularity.
You may have heard that the two groups are having a bit of a tiff. Metallica thinks Napster's music player encourages pirates, so the band has brought in the lawyers.
But if search "votes" are any indication, then Napster is winning the war for the hearts and minds of the public: last week the search count was 3-1 in Napster's favor.
Metallica fans are some of the most constant on the Web. Even with a 10% rise in queries after the lawsuit was announced, the band is at almost exactly the same level they were on January 1. Week to week the searches are remarkably constant -- not bad for a band about to start its third decade.
Napster has been a rocket ship, with user searches quadrupling since the start of 2000. Napster searches passed Metallica in early March and have continued up from there. And Napster searches are still rising an average of 10% per week.
Napster also has coined a baffling number of spinoffs, among them Wrapster, Gnapster, Rapster, and Macster. (Mapster, it turns out, predates Napster.) The company also inspires a carnival of misspellings, from Knapster and Wapster to Nepster and Nabster.
Metallica fans, on the other hand, nearly always spell the band's name right. About 1% of all Metallica searches are negative, either for the phrase "anti-Metallica" or the more elegant Metallica sucks. Last week, near as we can tell, nobody searched for "anti-Napster" or "Napster sucks."
In sum, Napster is winning this battle. But as for the war? The band has one thing on its side: longevity. At this rate in the year 2020 fans will still be searching for Metallica, but will anyone be looking for Napster?
