Home

Current Article

Napster The Worlds Largest Music Store

By Tim Somers on Aug 5, 2008 in Featured, General

I’ve been a long time iTunes user and just love my video iPod. I spend on average $15 to $20 a month for the music I download, approximately 20 songs at the .99 per song price that iTunes charges. On occasion I’ve purchased an entire album at $9.99 which usually beats buying the CD for $14.99 at a retail outlet.

I never used any peer to peer music sharing services like the old Napster, but the New Napster sure is grabbing my attention, they are now claiming to be the world’s largest music store with over 6 million tunes available for downloading. iTunes claims they have 6 million songs available.

So what’s the difference? As I see it just a commitment to Napster’s monthly $12.95 fee. I already spend upwards of $20 a month and I have to show some control to not spend $30 or even $40 a month – it is easy to loose track of how many songs you buy in a given month. At $12.95 if I stayed with my current 20 songs per month I’d be paying .65 per song and saving $7.05 per month, hey that’s almost 2 gallons of gas these days.

Napster is now compatible with ALL music devices…yes, even the iPod and iPhone! So with that said I am going to give Napster a shot using their “Try Napster Free For 7 Days” offer and see how I like it – then more than likely I’ll be on board for the long haul.

Here is a little background on Napster-

Roxio bought the assets of the original Napster company at its bankruptcy auction in 2002, with the objective of creating a new legal online music service which would let users access music through a subscription or on a fee-per-song basis—the artists and record companies the royalties they had been asking for as iTunes does. The new Napster was launched 6 months after iTunes launched.

Napster expects 2008 fourth quarter revenues to be in the neighborhood of $31 million. Napster is not only claiming to have the largest major label MP3 catalog in the industry, but also the largest library of independent music available anywhere. All U.S. download songs will now be in the user-friendly, DRM-free MP3 format, which is compatible with virtually any MP3 player or music phone including the iPod and the iPhone.