Napster Relaunches Tonight, Here Are The Details
Last fall, Best Buy bought Napster for a jaw dropping $121 million, a staggering sum in the free-music era that Napster helped create. The electronics retailer thinks it can do something special with the music service though and now those plans will see the light of day.
At 5pm PST the new Napster will launch with a $5 monthly subscription plan (down from the old $15 plan) and what you get for that price looks quite good. 5 MP3 downloads per month (screenshot shows free credits for an initial 35 MP3s too), free on-demand streaming of more than 7 million songs and additional download purchases for between 69 cents and $1.29. There's a screenshot of the new interface below and our thoughts on where this new version still falls short.
The New Front Page
New Interface
That interface looks like what iTunes would have looked like if it was a native Windows app.
The company says it is still working on making mobile a more compelling experience, something we expected to be a big part of the plan when the acquisition happened.
So how does this compare to other music solutions? Here at RWW we use Pandora, Lala and Amazon MP3. Obviously playing particular songs on demand is something Pandora doesn't do, but Pandora nails discovery and the iPhone. It's also free and very easy to use. Lala has a much nicer interface than Napster, it's less expensive but it's also a little confusing. Lala does, however, allow you to listen to new albums all the way through one time for free. Amazon MP3 is just a store, but works well when used in conjunction with Pandora or Lala.
This new Napster seems like a compelling offer but remains an incremental change from everything else the industry offers. Give me a $5 monthly subscription that combines Napster's streaming options with an entire album's worth of monthly MP3 files (5 songs is half an album), the full album previews of Lala, the recommendation and iPhone awesomeness of Pandora and the artist profile quality of Last.fm - and then we're really talking. Though for now, the new Napster seems like a pretty good deal.
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Marshall,
Thanks for the write-up. Do you know what kind of DRM is included with Napster's downloads? I used to use them but then had trouble sending to friends, so I switched to Amazon...
David, these are unrestricted MP3 downloads. DRM died late last year.
Pandora is awesome...if you're in the US. Last.fm is awesome...if you're in the US. How about a comparison of these services with an eye toward the international crowd?
Just a minor note: the Napster bought by Best Buy is *not* the same Napster that created the "free-music era". The Napster bought by Best Buy is actually formerly Roxio, which bought out the brand name of Napster in 2004, after the original Napster went into bankruptcy in 2002. Roxio bought the brand name from Bertelsmann.
So everyone's heard of Spotify then? http://www.spotify.com/en/
Free unlimited streaming, occasional ads, £9.99 for unlimited ads.
No downloads, but it is integrated with Last.fm so you can scrobble tracks. Great for an international audience, especially in the UK.
As I've written in my coverage over at last100:
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.
As Marshall rightly points out, until the new Napster offering supports mobile streaming, it will be a deal breaker for many.
http://www.last100.com/2009/05/18/napster-tries-again/
oh well, it seems pretty ugly. I think Spotify still remains the same. Why don't write a roundup about all of these services?
Best of luck to this venture, but i don't think we've seen the kind of revolution/revelation we need in monetizing music Dl's. Maybe revolution is too strong of a word... My friends mention that after experimenting in some private torrent communities, there is no better way to find new music... or so I've heard.
I'm all for figuring out how to make the artists and labels money. So we need a really great solution, and I don't think this model is it. But i'm excited about what's happening on the fringes of this industry.
Any guarantees they're mentioning about the how much/what kind of music they'll be serving?
As Marshall rightly points out, until the new Napster offering supports mobile streaming, it will be a deal breaker for many.
No downloads, but it is integrated with Last.fm so you can scrobble tracks. Great for an international audience, especially in the UK.
It looks like a big acquisition, of course,
Will people ever stop pushing version rap numbers on the web!
http://www.hiphopalemi.net/Sohbet.asp
Here in the UK Napster's new subscription rates have just hit. One of the advantages of the previous incarnation of Napster's subscription service was the ability to download tracks (albeit with DRM) of a higher quality than the streamed equivalent. For those of us who want quality rather quantity the new improved subscriptions would appear to be a backward step. Up the resolution of your streamed tracks or loose customers to the likes of Spotify!
Here in the UK Napster's new subscription rates have just hit. One of the advantages of the previous incarnation of Napster's subscription service was the ability to download tracks (albeit with DRM) of a higher quality than the streamed equivalent. For those of us who want quality rather quantity the new improved subscriptions would appear to be a backward step. Up the resolution of your streamed tracks or loose customers to the likes of Spotify
It looks like a big acquisition, of course,
No downloads, but it is integrated with Last.fm so you can scrobble tracks. Great for an international audience, especially in the UK.