Geek Tested:

Napster to Relaunch Again with New Streaming Strategy

Posted 05/18/09 at 09:41:51 AM by Paul Lilly

Let the streaming music wars begin. Just last week Microsoft went on the offensive and attacked Apple's iTunes service over its pricing model compared to the Zune Pass unlimited subscription service, which serves up all-you-can-listen-to tunes plus 10 free tracks for $14.99/month. Looking to leapfrog ahead of them both, Napster, now a Best Buy commodity, is planning to relaunch its subscription music service with a $5 deal that includes 5 free tracks every month.

"There's no need to settle for 30-second clips to decide if you want to buy a song," said Chris Gorog, CEO of Napster. "For five bucks now you can have access to our entire music catalog and get five MP3s to add to your permanent collection."

The new pricing model, which goes into effect tonight, could put Napster in contention with more popular music services and put the one-time P2P pioneer back on top. Napster's catalog sits at over 7 million strong and includes more than 60 commercial-free radio stations, which seems like an obscene amount of content for the same price as a Subway footlong.

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What do you mean a 2nd look?
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Fri, 05/22/2009 - 2:01am

What do you mean a 2nd look? This is like the 3rd or 4th. I just wish it would die and go away. In this economy who are the dumbasses that are investing in Napster?

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Eh... Disappointed in it.
Submitted by slumbersix on Tue, 05/19/2009 - 6:08am

I would jump on this if it was more like Rhapsody or Zune. Give us unlimited uploads to any of our MP3 devices(Ipod, Zune, Sansa, etc) for this price and I'd jump on it in a heartbeat.

As it stands now, $5 to just stream to my computer is not worth it to me.

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I'm game.
Submitted by allc0re on Mon, 05/18/2009 - 7:06pm

That's a just plain good deal. I'm signing up right now.

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So.. I take it that it's not
Submitted by bonedog73 on Mon, 05/18/2009 - 1:01pm

So.. I take it that it's not just a radio station for $5 a month? You can actually dowload DRM FREE songs for less than iTunes? I'm not sure what the excitement is about here. I can listen to Pandora for free and download songs at iTunes, why would this make me switch?

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If I understand correctly...
Submitted by HeartBurnKid on Mon, 05/18/2009 - 1:30pm

...the $5/month is for the full subscription service, meaning you can stream songs on-demand. That alone gives it a leg up on Pandora (not that Pandora isn't awesome.

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I think the important
Submitted by linux_dork on Mon, 05/18/2009 - 11:28am

I think the important question, not answered in this article, is how much they charge per-song after the 5 free songs?

If they are $0.99, then it's an awesome deal. If they're $1.00 or more, I'll stick to iTunes.

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Tracks
Submitted by One4yu2c on Mon, 05/18/2009 - 1:22pm

Songs range from $0.69 to $1.29 per track.

-Paul Lilly

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