Napster, the company that got the whole online music ball rolling, is returning to its free music roots — in a way. The company announced today that it will offer at no charge to users any of the two million songs in its catalog.
But, unlike the Napster of yesteryear, this go-around Napster will allow users to listen to the songs a maximum of five times. After that, a per song charge of $.99, or monthly subscription charges, kick in.
Napster is clearly taking a different tack from mighty rival iTunes, which makes music available on a strictly premium basis. Moreover, Napster isn’t compatible with the ubiquitous iPod anyway.
The struggling online music service hopes to ride the rising Internet advertising wave by selling ads on this free service. Napster will cut the record companies in on a share of the ad revenue.
Cynthia Brumfield at 1:37 PM|Comments(1)
The free songs on Napster sound awful. What kind of codec are they using!? Who needs this? Rhapsody.com has high quality music for free and it works on Mac.
Posted by: Jim at May 1, 2006 6:36 PM
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