Tag archive: Napster

The music industry has been forced to reinvent itself thanks to the Internet. Ever since Napster first appeared on the scene, consumers have been finding ways to get their music for free, at the detriment of recording labels and artists. One answer to this issue has been the subscription music model: Services like Spotify, Last.fm, MOG, and Rdio are compromises between a market that is searching for profit models and customers who simply won’t… Read More

Did you know that Napster was still alive? We almost forgot. Facing young competition from Spotify and other services, Rhapsody has decided that it's easier to buyout the competition. Today, the number one subscription music service (Rhapsody) will purchase the number two music subscription service (Napster) from its owner, Best Buy, which purchased the company in 2008. Many will remember Napster for its origins as a free service that… Read More

The music industry has been in a state of flux for awhile now. It feels like the moment Napster debuted, the entire market turned on a dime and has been grappling with the constant change every since. P2P download sites, iTunes, and the near-death of CDs has not been kind to music’s profitability – but there is hope. The Internet may have been too big a game-changer for the industry to immediately adapt to, but now it’s shaping and creating new… Read More

Walmart has issued a memo to all music licensing partners and informed them that the digital music store at “mp3.walmart.com” will be shutting down on August 28, 2011. All music content will no longer be available for download and users are urged to download DRM-free tracks before becoming unavailable. After the store closes up, tracks containing DRM will still be supported and will continue to work as the DRM servers are being kept… Read More

With Napster, Rhapsody and even newcomers like MOG hawking all-you-can play music for about the same price, the market for subscription music services is already packed shoulder to shoulder with vendors. They’ll all have to shove aside and make room for one more this week with the introduction of Rdio, a new service from the brains behind Skype, Kazaa and Joost. After opening a private, invite-only beta in June, Rdio’s library of 7 million songs… Read More

File sharing pioneers Janus Friis with Niklas Zennström are back again: after launching Kazaa, turning their attention to VoIP and launching Skype (and dare we mention Joost?) and enduring years of court battles and corporate negotiations, Friis and Zennström are back with Rdio, an all-you-can-eat subscription-based music service aimed at Web and smartphone users. But Rdio won't just be a run-of-the-mill music service: it aims… Read More

Online music service Napster—now a subsidiary of Best Buy—has been struggling to find an audience in a market dominated by Apple's iTunes along with music and streaming services offered by the likes of Real Networks, Pandora, and others. Now, in an effort to draw more listeners to its service—and more dollars to its corporate checkbook—Napster has unveiled a new $5 per month streaming music option, which… Read More

Consumer electronics retailer Best Buy has struck a deal to acquire online music service Napster in a transaction totaling some $121 million. The transaction has Best Buy paying $2.65 per share of Napster—just about double the company's closing stock price last week; as part of the deal, Best Buy also get about $67 million in short term investments and cash held by Napster, making Best Buy's net cost about $54 million. The… Read More

If you just had to run out to see the film version of the musical Mamma Mia!—or, perhaps, got dragged there against your will—online music service Napster hopes you were sufficiently swayed by the the Swedish disco-pop of 70s supergroup ABBA that you'll want to own their signature tunes for yourself. In fact, why stop with just the well-known hits like “Waterloo,” “Dancing Queen,” and “Take a… Read More

Making good on the promise it made earlier this year to deliver DRM-free MP3s, Napster launched its new Napster Store on Tuesday, which it claims is the largest of its kind in the world. Without DRM, the technology that limits how users can share and play music, its MP3 downloads will be compatible with nearly every type of media player, including the iPod and iPhone. Although its promise of 6 million tracks for download puts it roughly on… Read More

AT&T and Napster have announced an expansion to their existing agreement that enables Napster users to transfer their songs to selected AT&T handsets. Under the new plan, AT&T customers will be able to download songs wirelessly from Napster's catalog of about 5 million tracks directly to their cell phones. The songs will be priced at $1.99 each, or $7.49 for a bundle of five tunes: users who opt for the Five-Track Pack from… Read More

The digital music service Napster is relaunching itself as a Web-based music service that enables its users to tap into their music from any Web-enabled computer without having to download and install client software. Dubbed “Napster 4.0,” the idea is to make Napster's music service more flexible by being compatible with a wide range of Internet-enabled devices—with the hopes that, in turn, will attract more paying… Read More

Let the tunes begin. Music pioneer Napster is launching a new over-the-air music download service in Japan, the company announced today. Customers of NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest wireless carrier, will be able to use the service to download full-length songs to soon-to-be-released mobile devices, dubbed the 904i series—the new phones will also feature a Wii-like motion sensor for games. The mobile devices are compatible… Read More

Most of the recent news about former file-sharing bad boy Napster has been speculation about what company it might pick to be its new daddy. Despite giving away free MP3 players and a free ad-based music service to promote its online music services, the company has struggled to succeed in a digital music market dominated by Apple's iTunes—especially since the Windows Media-encoded music offered by Napster doesn't work in… Read More

Former online music bad-boy Napster today launched a Japanese version of its music subcription and download service, hoping to tap into one of the world's largest music markets and give Apple's iTunes a little dose of friendly competition. At launch the Japanese version of Napster is set to offer 1.5 million Japanese and international tracks. "Napster is very pleased to bring the first music subscription service to… Read More