Announced this week the service is expected to cost 14.95 for a months membership that includes unlimited downloads from it’s library of 1million titles.
Also Announced was a 30 million ad campaign to try and lure users from Apples I-Tunes store, Napsters biggest competitor. One of the main ads in the campaign ends with the tag line “Do the math”. At 99 cents a song it costs a hell of allot to fill an I-Pod with 10,000 songs. With Napster you can do it with just 15 dollars a month, roughly 180 per year.
This comes as Napster tries to capture some of it’s former shine in the music scene after it’s rebirth last year as a subscription based service. The core question being asked is would you rather buy music or rent it, Napster is willing to bet you would rather have access to any of 1 million songs, for a low monthly price. And it may just end up shaking up the online music industry – again – as a result.
Napster is the descendant of the original Bay Area company then owned by Shawn Fanning that between 1999 and 2001 popularized the sharing of free digital music files on the Internet. Copyright infringement lawsuits by the recording industry shut down the original incarnation of the software.
Napster was then purchased by Roxio in November of 2002.
Napster currently has more than a quarter of a million subscribers, each paying about $10 per month for access to the entire catalog of songs. It also offers Napster Light – the “not as desirable” version – which is essentially the same as the iTunes Music Store: 99 cent songs that you can do whatever you want with.
By:Bryan M.
