So Best Buy is acquiring Napster, the struggling music subscription service, for $121-million. That’s a nice premium for Napster’s shareholders — about 85 per cent over what the shares were trading for before the offer — but they are likely to be the only ones celebrating this deal, I predict (and even so, the stock [...]
If you read the news about Napster offering non-DRM mp3 files and felt a kind of psychological whiplash from all the ironies inherent in that brief item, don’t feel bad. I share your pain. Imagine: the idea of an online music provider named Napster offering actual mp3 files for people to download. I would have [...]
So Napster — the “new and improved” version — is going to try a Web-only strategy, after the (apparently) somewhat lacklustre response to its subscription-based downloadable software app and service. Smart move or desperate measure? Possibly a little bit of both. Let’s put it this way: it would have been a whole lot smarter, [...]
With all the attention Google has gotten for its new music search, you would think the company was going to compete with iTunes.com, or Napster.com — or that Larry and Sergey had set up their own music label. It isn’t the Google Music Store that some have been talking about, and you can’t even click [...]