Napster tries again

Now under the stewardship of Best Buy, Napster is taking yet-another-stab at offering a compelling music service since its glorious P2P days of yesteryear. This time round the company is touting the combination of unlimited streaming of its 7 million strong music library in combination with 5 DRM-free downloads per month, all for a monthly subscription of just five dollars. “Music fans now have the best of both worlds”, boasts the press release.

While that’s a bit of an exaggeration to say the least, Napster’s new offering doesn’t seem like such a bad deal at all. Essentially, you’re committing to buying 5 tracks per-month at average industry prices, with the company throwing in its streaming service for “free”. There is as always a potential deal breaker depending on how you like to consume your music. Device support for the streaming part of the service is, for now at least, quite limited: PC streaming through a standard web browser and possibly, though I can’t be sure, home audio systems, such as those from Sonos and Logitech (Squeezebox). In other words, there’s no support for streaming through mobile phones and other portable devices. If there were a Napster app for iPhone, for example, that might be worth paying the five dollars for alone.

Mobile support in general is an essential component if we’re ever to be persuaded to move to a cloud-based model whereby our music collection resides on remote servers and is only accessible through the Internet. That’s something that competing services such as Pandora, Slacker, Last.fm and soon Spotify, already acknowledge.

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Related Articles at last100:

• Napster reinvents itself — again
• AT&T, Napster hope kids will spend $$$ to download music to their phones
• Napster: DRM is dead, long live DRM
• Sony announces novel online-offline music strategy; Napster to sell DRM-free music, too
• iSlsk brings filesharing to the iPhone and iPod touch

1. iTunes
2. Wal-Mart (Walmart, Walmart.com, Walmart Music Downloads)
3. Best Buy (Best Buy, Bestbuy.com, Best Buy Digital Music Store)
4. Amazon (Amazon.com, AmazonMP3.com)
5. Target (Target and Target.com)

NPD says the results reflect “the ongoing consumer shift from physical CDs to digital music”, which has helped iTunes to consolidate the lead it established earlier this year.

See also: Review: Amazon MP3 offers compelling, promising alternative to iTunes

Most notably, Amazon has moved from fifth place to fourth, which NPD attributes to stronger CD sales online compared to competing brick-and-mortar stores, along with the launch of the company’s own music download store, AmazonMP3, last year. As a result, we shouldn’t be surprised to see Amazon overtake Best Buy in the not too distant future.

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Related Articles at last100:

• Report: Sony BMG to ditch DRM, iTunes excluded once again
• iTunes overtakes Best Buy to become No.2 music retailer in U.S.
• Napster: DRM is dead, long live DRM
• Report: Apple is exploring “all you can eat” and subscription models for iTunes Store
• Weekly wrapup, 4-8 August 2008