Napsters rebirth goes for broke

Consumer electronics retailing giant Best Buy recently acquired the brand name to Napster, the first mainstream P2P music sharing client. Now, Napster's service is getting a makeover from a DRM-laden $13/month service to a $5/month service, which includes five MP3 tracks, and unlimited on-demand streaming of seven million tracks from Napster's catalog. Is this rebirth enough for people to sit up and take note? We talk to John Falcone from CNET, and Rob Enderle from the Enderle Group, a consumer electronics research and consulting group. John thinks the service is nice, but when you compare it to the likes of Last.FM and Pandora, it might be $5 too expensive for the average consumer. Rob's not too optomistic either, as he's not sure consumers are going to want to be limited by their on-the-go access. I'm still reserving judgement for the whole thing. It doesn't seem too far fetched to spend $5 a month on music, so if Napster can provide an excellent music discovery experience and couple that with an iPhone app, or other proper ecosystem methods for accessing music anywhere, I might give it a shot. If not, there's always Pandora and Last.FM.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• napster
• itunes
• apple
• company
• best
• buy
• music
• on
• demand
• streaming
• ipod