Napster, Reborn, Again, Tries the Subscription Plan

Napster holds a special place in internet history as one of the first sites to bring P2P file-sharing to the masses.  Napster is also often wrongly blamed for bring down the music industry.  Those of us with even a shred of intelligence understand that the music industry, or big labels to be more specific, brought themselves down with bad business practices that treated musicians as indentured servants and fans as potential criminals.

Anyhow, Napster was bought by BestBuy not too long ago and they have relaunched with a model that is growing in popularity:

…if you subscribe for a year and pay $60, you get a year’s subscription to a pretty decent on-demand music service. You also get access to 60 commercial-free internet radio stations and 1,400 “expertly programmed playlists.” And when you cancel the service, you’ll get to keep 60 songs… which probably would have cost you about $60 anyway if you’d purchased them from Amazon, iTunes, or another online music store. LINK

Of course, this isn’t anywhere close to the first subscription music service and right now it requires you to be at your computer and online to use the service – no portable device support as of yet.

The advantage of this service to something free like Slacker.com or Pandora.com is that it gives you the freedom to pick the exact songs you want to hear when you want to hear them.

Here are the issues that will effect the potential success or failure of the Napster plan:

1) Is $60/year a price the market will deem “fair” AND is it enough money for Napster to pay the rightsholders should users stream music at heavy rates?

2) Will the lack of portability make this a no-go from the get-go?

3) Can Napster supply a broad enough library of music to keep the audience happy?

4) With all the free options out there is this enough of a service to compete?

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