I never abandoned purchasing music all together, but the MP3 struck me as a far more convenient format than the compact disc, and Napster gave me quick and easy access to a world of MP3's. When Radiohead's "Kid A" showed up on Napster weeks before the CD was available in stores, what was I supposed to do? Ignore it?

The Napster brand lived on for years to come, having been converted to a pay subscription music service. Unsurprisingly, it never quite returned to the levels of popularity it saw in 1999, as new digital music services popped up left and right. Most recently, the company was purchased by one of those services, Rhapsody. Today, Napster will officially be absorbed into the Rhapsody brand and even that iconic, headphone-wearing logo, once a symbol a generation's digital defiance, will cease to be used.

Ten Years After Napster, Digital Music is Still Evolving

As we head toward 2012, the digital music landscape looks very different, and in fact is still evolving into something that works well for fans, music labels and artists alike. The record industry as we once knew it may never return, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Today, people can record multi-track demos on the tiny computers they carry in their pockets and produce complete, studio-quality tracks on their laptops later. Once everything is mixed and mastered, they can publish it online audience at little to no cost.

Naturally, DIY artists who get started on the Internet don't have quite the reach of a record label, but many musicians have launched their careers online and some established artists have relied on the Web in lieu of the record labels that once supported them.

Consuming Music is Even Easier Without Napster

As far as consuming music, it's never been easier. Just as one used to be able to find new albums on Napster or LimeWire within days of their release, most major label and indie releases are available on Spotify, Rdio or MOG pretty much right away. If not, you can try Grooveshark, as long as it's still around, anyway. If those freemium streaming sites don't have what you're looking for, Apple, Google and Amazon all have massive MP3 stores with cloud-based storage services alongside them.

In addition to being legal, today's digital music services go beyond the desktop and are readily available on our smartphones, those little gadgets could have hardly imagined a decade ago. They're even starting to get integrated into smart TVs, cars and a growing number of household appliances.

For a more serendipitous listening experience, there's personalized Internet radio services like Pandora, Last.fm and Slacker Music. If you prefer human recommendations over algorithms, services like Shuffler.com scan hundreds of popular music blogs and build genre-based, curated music stations, even on the iPad. You can even listen to others DJ their own setlists in real time using services like Turntable.fm or one of its many copycats.

Of course, if none of these options give you what you're looking forward, less-than-legal means to acquire music still exist, but you didn't hear it from us.

The acquisition will give Rhapsody Napster's paying subscribers as well as "certain other assets" including Napster's IP portfolio. The companies' announcement did not divulge the current number of Napster subscribers, but it's understood to be at least half of Rhapsody's 700,000 subscribers.

Napster filed for bankruptcy and was ordered to liquidate its assets in 2002. The company's assets and brand changed hands a few times before being purchased by Roxio, which relaunched Napster as a pay subscription music service.

After its relaunch as a pay service, Napster never quite regained the popularity it once had in its P2P days, during which it grew significantly thanks to the ongoing media coverage and controversy Napster garnered at the time.

This latest deal effectively rolls Napster's remaining subscribers and IP portfolio into Rhapsody, which the company hopes will better position it to compete against the likes of Rdio, MOG and Spotify, the European on-demand streaming service that launched in the United States in July.

This new breed of on-demand, all-you-can-stream subscription music service has been growing in popularity in the years since the demise of the original Napster. Several of them, including Spotify and Rhapsody, recently unveiled tight integrations with Facebook for a more social music-listening and sharing experience. There's even evidence suggesting that the rise of pay subscription services has helped decrease illegal piracy of the sort Napster originally enabled.

But is Amazon's cloud-based music storage service really all that innovative? Some journalists and analysts are saying it's not. Do you agree?

To be impressed with Amazon's offering, you have to ignore the numerous startups already serving this space. For example, Rdio, the on-demand music streaming service from Skype, Kazaa and Joost creators Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, lets users store an unlimited amount of music from their own personal collections online. Rdio users download the Rdio Desktop software program, which scours for tracks saved to a computer's hard drive. Those files are then matched with the tunes in Rdio's own collection.

The price is a bit more than Amazon's service, which starts by giving you 5 GBs for free. Instead, Rdio charges $4.99/month for Web access or $9.99/month for Web + mobile access. But the bonus here is that you also have access to Rdio's entire collection of music totaling over 7 million songs. With Amazon, you can only access your own files or those you choose to purchase from Amazon's MP3 store in the future.

If you aren't interested in a subscription service and just want to store your own music "in the cloud," smaller startups have already provided this capability for many months. In August 2010, for example, Audiogalaxy launched a mobile music streaming service which lets you stream music directly from your home computer to your mobile phone for free. Unlimited storage is provided here, too. After all - it is your own computer.

Another alternative service, Audiobox.fm, works on Android, iPhone/iPod Touch and the Web while storing files on its own servers. It's $3.99/month for 11 GB. There's also Grooveshark, Rhapsody, Napster, Soundcloud, Last.fm, Pandora, Songbird and others, all bringing music streaming to both online and mobile users.

5 GB for Free? Who Cares! We Have 100 GB of Music, Don't You?

Then there's this question: who does 5 GB even work for? Many digital music consumers have collections that span decades, including CDs imported into iTunes, MP3 files traded for free during the wild west days of Napster and torrenting plus carefully curated playlists of tracks purchased in later years from online stores like iTunes, Amazon and eMusic.

To get a better understanding of Amazon's pricing, consider this: a 100 GB collection, stored in Amazon's cloud, is $100.00 per year. 1,000 GB is $1,000 per year.  These are not prices that make sense when you can get access to 7 million tracks at Rdio for $10 per month. Or 10 million tracks at MOG for the same rate.

Forrester: This isn't Innovation

Even ignoring Amazon's competition, Amazon's service itself just isn't all that innovative. Or so says Forrester analyst Mark Mulligan. "...Let's not get carried away," he wrote in a blog post today. "As logical a next step in the digital music market that locker services might be, they’re not an innovation in the music product. They’re simply giving people access to the music they have on the devices they own. Consumers simply expect this."

Darned right we do. For the prices Amazon charges, we should expect access to subscription music, not just paid access to our own files. And we expect to be able to stream that music to all our devices. Amazon isn't even providing that - it's limited to the Web and Android phones. What about our TVs, cars, home stereos? What about our iPhones? Streaming music services like Pandora, Rdio, MOG and others are integrating themselves into all sorts of appliances and consumer electronics products. You can stream Pandora from a Samsung Refrigerator. Rdio from your Sonos system. MOG from your car. Where can you stream Amazon? Select mobile phones? The Web? How earth-shaking.

In fact, "Amazon's Cloud Music Move Isn't Earth-Shaking" is the exact headline Peter Kafka used to describe the launch over on AllThingsD.

"The future of cloud-based music is here today," he wrote. "It looks a lot like the past."

"Amazon’s Cloud Drive/Cloud Player combo sounds cool, because it has the word 'Cloud' in it. It’s quite useful, too. But if you’re a music lover looking for a paradigm shift in the way you consume tunes, this won’t be it."

His main complaints? Amazon doesn't provide access to your files on all your devices and it doesn't help you discover new music. These were Mulligan's complaints, too. He even went so far as to say that "locker services will not save the music industry." What will, Mulligan notes, is a generation of high quality music experiences that are: social, participative, accessible, relevant and connected.

"Amazon just ticked off the C," he says.

Known as the premier angel investor, Conway admitted that he had fretted about what the content for today's lecture should be, but with some urging from YC's Paul Graham, Conway opted to simply tell a few stories of how he had met a number of today's strongest tech companies: Napster, Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

Although going public with Altos was a huge win for Conway, he argued that he defines success by having what was, at the time, the fastest growing company in America. "And that was more satisfying than getting rich."

And the message Conway repeated to the crowd at Stanford today: "You can do it too."

Napster's Shawn Fanning: Superstardom and Borrowed Suits

Conway told of a party at his house in 1999, at the top of the Internet bubble. With 40 million users at the time, Napster founder Shawn Fanning had a large crowd around him the whole time at the party. "I'm going to go talk to the two wallflowers over there, Larry and Sergey," said Conway, who told the investor that "We're going to build a big company too, but we will never be famous like Shawn."

Conway pointed out that Fanning managed to cultivate a strong brand name with Napster, and while Napster didn't survive, Fanning used that brand name to build future companies. When Napster lost its first court ruling, said Conway, Fanning showed up in a suit he'd borrowed, as he'd never worn one before.

But as Conway noted, Fanning was smart enough to know that once Napster found itself in the courts that things were probably all over. And Fanning was perceptive enough, despite his young age, to be ready to move on to his next idea and his next company.

Building a Good Service, Building a Good Brand Name, then Monetizing: Early Google

When Google was looking for its first VC round, the founders told Conway that if he could help the company secure investment from Sequoia that they'd let him invest as well. Criticizing some of the recent protestations about valuations of startups, Conway noted that the valuation of that round was $75 million - "and every one of us felt lucky to get in on it."

Conway talked about the attention that Larry and Sergei paid to learning how to become good CEOs. And he said that the important things to the founders of Google was providing a good service, making users happy, and building a good brand name. And then monetize.

Conway also related an anecdote when Sheryl Stanberg approached Conway as Google thought it was running out of money. Ten days later, Conway joked, Google changed its mind as "AdWords started working."

What The Social Network Gets Wrong about Zuckerberg

"Zuck," says Conway, "meets the definition of 'anyone can do it if they think big.'" Railing against the depiction of the early days of Facebook as chronicled in The Social Network, Conway insists that Zuckerberg was not partying all the time. Nor was he sitting in depositions five days a week, arguing with lawyers. Rather, "he was working his tail off like any good entrepreneur."

Conway argued that Zuckerberg has had a consistent vision about what Facebook is, something that isn't evident in the film. "How are you going to measure success with this thing called 'social networking'?" Conway asked Zuckerberg in an early interaction. "Because some day I am going to have 300 million users using this product," was Zuckerberg's response. Something that demonstrates the founders humility, says Conway.

The Origin and the Definition of "Founder Friendly"

"Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur," said Conway. You don't need to have a business plan or an MBA. All you need, says Conway, is a great idea. Anything is possible and you can accomplish it.

Demonstrating how he has been known as not just an early investor but a strong ally and advocate for startups but also alluding to some of the recent "Angelgate" controversies, Conway ended by saying "entrepreneurs build companies and should be the one who are the focus of the stories" the press writes - not investors.

"Never forget it's your company," said Conway. "It's the founder's company."

Though it's entering the market a bit later than some competitors, it comes with a larger catalog than some and features similar to those that have tipped the scales for other services.

It's been a long time since Napster straightened up and flew right, and the advantage of going legit is that its users can now pay $10 a month for access to a catalog of more than 10 million songs. The app gives users the ability to stream music and download it to their phone for offline listening, much like other apps. In many ways, the Napster iPhone app looks remarkably similar to other apps, like Rdio or MOG, in feature-set, catalog size, user interface and even cost. The big thing it carries that other services don't is name recognition, which is perhaps why Best Buy bought the music service back in 2008.

Right now, the music app market is seeming more and more saturated with apps that do nearly the same exact thing, with nearly the same catalog for nearly the same price, and it may come down to factors like name recognition or ease of use. The other day, we wrote about how MOG got us to pay for music but if another app, like Napster, is suddenly available for the same price with more music, what's stopping us from switching over? Or if social features like community-created playlists are what fuels our music discovery, will a service's popularity be the deciding factor?

For now, it feels like mobile music is anybody's game (and Google or Apple could come in with a cloud-based service at any time and upend everything), but Napster is surely a solid competitor in the current atmosphere.

The app is now available for download in the App Store.

Until then, here are 5 online music services that either allow you to stream your own music collection or give you access to large libraries of streaming music. Some of these even allow mobile streaming, which is something Lala never offered.

Streaming Music Locker

MP3tunes

If you don't want to be limited to playing the music that the music industry made available for on-demand streaming and you don't mind paying a monthly fee, MP3tunes is also worth a look. Just like Lala, MP3tunes allows you to upload all your music to an online music locker and then stream it. MP3tunes offers a web interface, mobile apps and support for a range of other devices like the Chumby, Wii and Logitech Squeezebox. As we noted earlier this week, MP3tunes now offers up to 10GB of free storage.

Streaming Music Services

MOG

For $5 a month, MOG's users get access to more than 5 million songs on demand. At this year's SXSW festival in Austin, MOG also announced that it will offer mobile apps for the iPhone and Android platforms in the next few months. The service also offers artist-based radio stations that are similar to Pandora's and Slacker's offerings.

Napster and Rhapsody

While the name harks back to the early days of illegal MP3 downloads, Napster is now a pretty standard MP3 store that also allows you to stream any of the 9 million songs in its library. For $7 per month, you can stream all the songs in Napster's library and download an additional 5 DRM-free MP3 files (more if you sign up for an annual plan).

Rhapsody also offers 9 million songs for on-demand streaming ($10/month), but unlike Napster, it also offers mobile apps (iPhone and Android).

Do-It-Yourself

Sockso

You can, of course, also use your own computer at home to stream music over the Internet. Simplify Music used to be our favorite service for doing this, but the company shut down last month.

A good alternative to Simplify Media is Sockso, an open source program, that can be installed on any Windows, OSX and Linux machine with very little effort (though you will need to set up the port forwarding on your router). The application gives you total control over your music experience and you can even share your music with anybody else on the Internet if you feel like doing so (and, of course, you have the legal rights to do so).

For a simplified version of this, also have a look at Opera Unite, which offers a built-in streaming music server for all Opera users.

Spotify, which currently has about 7 million users in Europe, allows anybody to stream the company's music library for free (with ads) to their desktops. During his SXSW keynote interview, Daniel Ek noted that the U.S. launch would coincide with the release of an updated version of the Spotify desktop client. We assume to hear more about this in the coming weeks. According to most industry pundits, a launch date somewhere between Q3 2010 and early 2011 seems reasonable.

Too Little, Too Late?

As our own Mike Melanson noted after Ek's SXSW keynote, Spotify faces strong competition in the United States. Companies like MOG, Napster and others are starting to gain traction in the U.S. while Spotify is still trying to put all its deals with the record labels in place. According to Spotify's Paul Brown, the company's negotiations in the U.S. "are going fine because we're in a long-term partnership with the labels and publishers."

Spotify currently has about 325,000 paying subscribers in Europe. Subscribers get access to an ad-free version of Spotify, as well as access to the company's iPhone, Android and mobile apps.

Instead, we got somewhat evasive and allusive answers on when to expect a U.S. version and were left looking to yesterday's announcement of MOG's move to mobile, with full knowledge that Napster is nipping at its heels.

Ek said that he thinks that the day that we allow music to be seamlessly transported between platforms and carried around on mobile devices would be when we saved the music industry.

"Music that I really love, I tend to want to buy and own still," said Ek. "I don't necessarily want to own it in the format it used to be, like in a dumb plastic disk, but I'm more than happy to pay $100 to get a box set with a t-shirt and notes."

He explained that, while many seem to criticize Spotify for giving music away for free and adding to the problem, "it's not free" and that "with all those listings on the Spotify platform, the artists get paid every time" their music is played.

Ek argued that he thought that the music industry would be "radically bigger" today if users could legally have music on any device, using the metaphor of music as flowing water.

We did, however, get to see a quick demonstration of Spotify for Android, but it was a bit quick to glean much in the way of usability. It did, indeed, play music.

In the end, though, we have to wonder why we're all holding our breath for Spotify to land on U.S. shores. By the show of hands, it certainly doesn't seem that hard to acquire and we have some valid alternatives, like MOG and the soon-to-be Napster platform, as well as their web counterparts.

If you're that worried about getting Spotify, our suggestion would be to go get a proxy service set up and get to it already.

When we looked at the rebirth of the Web TV last year, we had one major reservation - would people really buy a new TV just for the widgets? "Probably not," we said. This year, Yahoo! is bringing the Internet into our other devices, so we don't have to.

According to the press release, new deals with MIPS, Sigma Designs and ViewSonic will enable Yahoo! Widgets to be embedded not only in Internet-connected TVs, but in a number of other devices, such as media players, "Blu-ray players, network players, AV receivers, and cable/IPTV set-top boxes." This is a big move because, while we may not want to replace our widescreen TV, we might be in the market for a Blu-ray player.

Today's announcement also highlighted deals with a number of new content providers, including Showtime, CNBC, Napster, The Weather Channel and more. But do we really need The Weather Channel widget when we can have just The Weather Channel, itself? Maybe. Maybe not. But the company's release of its widget development kit to the general public might open the doors to some interesting new widgets.

Cory Pforzheimer, a spokesperson for Yahoo!, told us earlier today that keeping the WDK private was an issue of working together with TV manufacturers and software developers.

"TV manufacturers weren't really used to updating after they sent out their units. There's no such thing as a beta on a TV," he said. "The last thing Samsung wants is calls when someone's Facebook widget doesn't work."

The combination of affordability and potential for innovation here could be just enough to bring the Web back to the TV through the side door.

Without doubt, consumers in 1999 needed better access to music. They needed the opportunity to preview full tracks, to pick and choose songs from an album and to have instant gratification through online downloads. And 10 years later, consumers still have all those lovely perks. Napster ate it (thanks, Metallica!), but Kazaa sprang from its ashes. Then there was Limewire and its cadre. Due props to Apple for monetizing the system as it stood when the iTunes store came on the scene, but users are now ridiculously entitled about what kinds of readily available (a.k.a. easily stolen) files they are willing to pay for and their justifications for stealing media. Yet musicians, as much as they've tried to adapt, are still getting screwed by the Internet and their fans.

Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

Napster CEO Says Consumers Needed Free Music, Control

On the Napster blog CEO, Chris Gorog, wrote yesterday, "The original Napster hadn't thought through how to protect artists' rights... Napster was about putting the control into consumers' hands so they could find virtually any song they could think of."

That kind of thinking makes me twitch. I love users. I am a user. And yes, I've illegally downloaded my fair share of tunes over the years. (Sorry, Journey, but the road trip karaoke sessions would've been meaningless without "Don't Stop Believing".)

However, consumers neither need nor deserve control over content they did not create.

Illegal downloads have been said by many to stimulate sales; the Radiohead album Kid A is often cited as a case in point. But when users are downloading media as a substitute for actually purchasing it, the paradigm hurts musicians far more than it helps. I would venture to speculate that in P2P ecosystems, users get the glory and commercial musicians get the hard knocks. Users have dozens of ways - P2P, YouTube, a bajillion file-sharing sites - to share music that profit the musicians themselves little or not at all.

But where are the online tool kits for the thousands of working musicians - often independent of record labels' heavy duty promotional machines - who live and die by their ability to promote and sell their songs?

Napster introduced a single-edged paradigm: free content for users at musicians' and labels' expense.

What has the Internet done for musicians and labels lately?

Napster Worked Actively Against Musicians, and No One Worked (Well) With Them

Napster spent the first part of this decade showing complete disregard for the promotional and sales needs and wants of musicians. Can you imagine what the musical online landscape would look like if they had seen the copyright wars as an opportunity rather than a legal problem? What would have happened if they had invested that time and money in creating a workable solution for getting users to pay for content? If they'd worked with bands to create and market non-audio, extracurricular content for fans? If they'd been creative instead of passive-aggressively litigious?

Here's what happened to musicians working online since 1999: MySpace.

MySpace, a tragic tale of clunky interfaces, slow fan-finding, spammy marketing tools, confusing events organization, bad media players and no revenue.

While consumers were rejoicing in the newfound glut of free tracks, working musicians (as distinguished from lolling-about-in-the-Playboy-Mansion-grotto musicians), especially the independent ones, had to struggle with the most time-consuming, noisy promotional channel possible. And when a challenger sprung up (Facebook, duh) to take that channel's place, the musicians were homeless because the challenger included no music-related tools.

What's the Future Look Like from the Napster P.O.V.?

Currently, our musician friends are struggling to craft cohesive online marketing and sales strategies from a patchwork of odds and ends.

And Napster?

Gorog examines the current landscape of a la carte online music stores (such as iTunes) and streaming media sites (such as Pandora), concluding, "No service has cracked the nut and figured out how to create a profitable business model." What's his company's solution? "With Napster's new offering introduced on May 18, we believe we bring the best of both worlds together. Five bucks each month gets you 5 MP3s" plus streaming audio.

Let us introduce a long, thoughtful pause in honor of Napster's $5-for-5 subscription plan, which is as unoriginal as it is a bad deal. It's a mashup of two models that Gorgog just stated didn't work, and when compared to Emusic's and other sites' subscription plans (about $12 a month gets you about 30 MP3s) and Last.fm/Imeem/Pandora's free streaming offerings, it seems very financially stupid - especially considering that Napster introduced the now commonly held expectation that all this media should be free. Gorog states he sees a future of subscription plans for unlimited, on-demand music. But again, this is a probably not a paradigm that will profit bands.

It used to be that record labels were in charge of screwing musicians over (click the link for a classic article by producer Steve Albini). Now, that task has passed to the fans themselves, with special thanks to the developers who focus on illegal file-sharing over usable platforms for musicians and consumers alike.

In the coming days, we'd like to address the concerns of and online tools for working/commercial musicians. We're aware of a few good ones, but we encourage you brilliant RWW commenter-types to leave your thoughts - and pointers to musician-friendly startups - below. We've got a cabal of techie-musician-hybrid dudes just waiting to beta test them.

Trend: Illegal File Sharing Sites Go Legit

The interesting trend, here, though, is that a lot of companies and services that were previously known for being 'illegal' hubs for file sharing are now trying to go legit. Napster, the grandfather for Kazaa and most of its brethren, is now a respectable paid service, and the Pirate Bay may offer a legal version of its service soon.

As Eric Pfanner pointed out in the New York Times, we are now getting to the point where using legal services like Spotify or Lala are actually so much more convenient than illegally downloading music. Given this trend, it makes sense for centralized services like Kazaa to slowly drift to a legal model. At the same time, decentralized file sharing options like BitTorrent, which don't depend on a single company to work, will still continue to be popular. Chances are, though, that users will probably share less music through torrents over the next year or so, as more cheap and free options allow users to legally access music more conveniently.

Without doubt, consumers in 1999 needed better access to music. They needed the opportunity to preview full tracks, to pick and choose songs from an album, and to have instant gratification through online downloads. And ten years later, consumers still have all those lovely perks. Napster ate it (thanks, Metallica!), but Kazaa sprang from its ashes. Then there was Limewire and its cadre. Due props to Apple for monetizing the system as it stood when the iTunes store came on the scene, but users are now ridiculously entitled about what kinds of readily available (a.k.a. easily stolen) files they are willing to pay for and their justifications for stealing media. Yet musicians, as much as they've tried to adapt, are still getting screwed by the Internet and their fans.

On the Napster blog CEO, Chris Gorog, wrote yesterday, "The original Napster hadn't thought through how to protect artists' rights... Napster was about putting the control into consumers' hands so they could find virtually any song they could think of."

That kind of thinking makes me twitch. I love users. I am a user. And yes, I've illegally downloaded my fair share of tunes over the years (sorry, Journey, but the road trip karaoke sessions would've been meaningless without "Don't Stop Believing").

However, consumers neither need nor deserve control over content they did not create.

Illegal downloads have been said by many to stimulate sales; the Radiohead album Kid A is often cited as a case in point. But when users are downloading media as a substitute for actually purchasing it, the paradigm hurts musicians far more than it helps. I would venture to speculate that in P2P ecosystems, users get the glory and commercial musicians get the hard knocks. Users have dozens of ways - P2P, YouTube, a bajillion file-sharing sites - to share music that profit the musicians themselves little or not at all.

But where are the online toolkits for the thousands of working musicians - often independent of record labels' heavy duty promotional machines - who live and die by their ability to promote and sell their songs?

Napster introduced a single-edged paradigm: free content for users at musicians' and labels' expense.

What has the Internet done for musicians and labels lately?

Napster Worked Actively Against Musicians, and No One Worked (Well) With Them

Napster spent the first part of this decade showing complete disregard for the promotional and sales needs and wants of musicians. Can you imagine what the musical online landscape would look like if they had seen the copyright wars as an opportunity rather than a legal problem? What would have happened if they had invested that time and money in creating a workable solution for getting users to pay for content? If they'd worked with bands to create and market non-audio, extracurricular content for fans? If they'd been creative instead of passive-aggressively litigious?

Here's what happened to musicians working online since 1999: MySpace.

MySpace, a tragic tale of clunky interfaces, slow fan-finding, spammy marketing tools, confusing events organization, bad media players, and no revenue.

While consumers were rejoicing in the newfound glut of free tracks, working musicians (as distinguished from lolling-about-in-the-Playboy-Mansion-grotto musicians), especially the independent ones, had to struggle with the most time-consuming, noisy promotional channel possible. And when a challenger sprung up (Facebook, duh) to take that channel's place, the musicians were homeless because the challenger included no music-related tools.

What's the Future Look Like from the Napster P.O.V.?

Currently, our musician friends are struggling to craft cohesive online marketing and sales strategies from a patchwork of odds and ends.

And Napster?

Gorog examines the current landscape of a la carte online music stores (such as iTunes) and streaming media sites (such as Pandora), concluding, "No service has cracked the nut and figured out how to create a profitable business model." What's his company's solution? "With Napster's new offering introduced on May 18, we believe we bring the best of both worlds together. Five bucks each month gets you 5 MP3s" plus streaming audio.

Let us introduce a long, thoughtful pause in honor of Napster's $5-for-5 subscription plan, which is as unoriginal as it is a bad deal. It's a mashup of two models that Gorgog just stated didn't work, and when compared to Emusic's and other sites' subscription plans (about $12 a month gets you about 30 MP3s) and Last.fm/Imeem/Pandora's free streaming offerings, it seems very financially stupid - especially considering that Napster introduced the now commonly held expectation that all this media should be free. Gorog states he sees a future of subscription plans for unlimited, on-demand music. But again, this is a probably not a paradigm that will profit bands.

It used to be that record labels were in charge of screwing musicians over (click the link for a classic article by producer Steve Albini). Now, that task has passed to the fans themselves, with special thanks to the developers who focus on illegal file-sharing over usable platforms for musicians and consumers alike.

In the coming days, we'd like to address the concerns of and online tools for working/commercial musicians. We're aware of a few good ones, but we encourage you brilliant RWW commenter-types to leave your thoughts - and pointers to musician-friendly startups - below. We've got a cabal of techie-musician-hybrid dudes just waiting to beta test them.

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.

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.

At about $160 a year, Datz' plan is comparable to most subscription services, though the high upfront cost and limited selection might make quite a few potential subscribers think twice about the value of this new service.

Mark Mulligan from Jupiter Research argues that Datz is a big deal - not because it might become a market leader itself, but because it has laid a licensing groundwork for the rest of the industry.

Indeed, it will be interesting to see if other services will offer similar all-you-can-eat plans in the future and if the music industry as a whole will be willing to go along with this.

At the end of the day, it is good to see yet another new business model for music services and that at least some of the labels are willing to experiment with new licensing models as well.

It's All About Mobile

Best Buy must think that it can push Napster to be a profitable part of its company, but over the last few years, the company never turned a profit. Best Buy, of course, does have a considerable amount of marketing power both in its ubiquitous big-box stores, as well as through TV and print advertising. Judging from the wording of the press release, it seems Best Buy is mostly interested in Napster's mobile business. In the mobile business, Apple doesn't have the dominant market position it has in the regular MP3 player market, so by positioning Napster there, Best Buy might be able to carve out a lucrative niche for the service.

Bundles

Chances are that Best Buy will start bundling Napster with anything from toaster ovens to overpriced Monster cables in the coming months. The holiday season, after all, is right around the corner and if Best Buy still wants to get some value out of the acquisition this year, they will have to act fast.