Napster relaunch takes music industry by surprise

[Malicious Intent]

Napster relaunch takes music industry by surprise

Napster, the online music service that brought the music industry to its knees, was today relaunched in the UK as a legitimate service in a move that record labels hope will revitalise sales.

The move by Roxio, the company that bought the Napster brand and employed dotcom whizzkid founder Shawn Fanning as a consultant, took the music industry by surprise.

The relaunch was welcomed by major record labels, which blame piracy and online file sharing for a disastrous drop in global sales.

This has led to an unprecedented round of blood-letting at companies including EMI, Warner Music and Bertelsmann-owned BMG, with hundreds of redundancies and scores of artists dropped.

But the new online service could face a backlash from consumers, after Napster revealed that tracks downloaded over the service in the UK would be almost twice as expensive as in the US.

The Napster chief executive, Chris Gorog, said the launch of the service would spell the end of high street record stores within 10 years, playing heavily on Napster's illegitimate heritage as in illegal music download supplier to sell the new, music industry-approved, offering to consumers.

"A few years ago a young visionary by the name of Shawn Fanning spent hour after hour in his uncle's garage typing code," Mr Gorog said.

"When Napster went live, the world changed as we knew it. Music would never be the same and nor would the music industry. 2004 is set to be a very momentous year in the evolution of the music industry."

The surprise early relaunch of Napster is an attempt to establish the service before Apple brings its successful iTunes service to Europe later this summer

Apple's planned iTunes launch comes on the back of the success of its iPod personal audio device, hailed as the Walkman of the 21st century.

Napster has signed deals with all five major record companies, as well as hundreds of independent labels, to offer 700,000 tracks representing a huge range of artists from Beyonce to U2, bar some notable exceptions such as the Beatles.

It has also teamed up with computer giants Microsoft, Intel and Samsung and signed a nationwide UK distribution deal with Dixons Group.

A summer marketing blitz and seven-day free trial is designed to ram home the fact that, whereas iPod owners can only download songs from iTunes, its service is compatible with over 60 portable players and can also run on Microsoft's new Media Centre home entertainment system.

In the UK Napster will offer a £9.95 a month subscription service, allowing users to download as many songs as they like to their PC hard drive from the catalogue of more than 700,000 songs.

Consumers will then pay an extra 99p a track, or £9.95 per album, to transfer the songs to CD or a portable player.

Casual users can also access the service, listening to 30-second clips and downloading songs for £1.09p each and full albums for £9.95.

In an effort to replicate the community atmosphere of the original Napster, which at its peak attracted 60 million users, subscribers will also have access to online music magazine Fuzz, 10 interactive radio stations and email and chat options allowing them to share their favourite songs with others.

Despite the hype surrounding the launch, the UK version of Napster, which has been reconfigured to appeal to domestic music tastes, could face a backlash from consumer groups over its pricing.

In the US, the monthly subscription costs $9.95 while individual tracks cost 99 cents each.

With the weakness of the dollar, the UK service is almost twice as expensive - a decision likely to provoke a furious response from those who have campaigned against the high price of CDs.

Mr Gorog claimed the higher price was down to the wholesale prices charged by record companies and the addition of VAT, pointing out that for £9.95 a month subscribers had access to the entire Napster catalogue of 700,000 tracks.

Record company bosses are banking on the European launches of Napster and iTunes, together with a series of new legal download services from the likes of Sony and Coca-Cola, to help reverse falling single sales and discourage the use of illegal filesharing sites.

Buoyed by the success of the iPod, Apple is expected to launch its popular iTunes download service, which has sold 70 million tracks in the US in the past year, in the UK this summer.

But not everyone was convinced by Napster's rhetoric predicting the death of the record store.

A Virgin Megastores spokesman said that it was "certainly not a threat".

"Customers still love to get their hands on an actual product and are using downloads to try out artists before they commit to buying a whole album. It's actually raising more interest in music so it's good news for everyone," he added.

[Malicious Intent]

Would I use this service?

To be sung in D-

#no no no no no no no no no no no no

Songs for £1.09! lmfao

You'll need a lot more money than sense to pay that!

[Malicious Intent]

3 pence more and it is double the price as the American equivilent!

I can't get my head around it. It is awful. People will actually be conned into paying this.

[Bombardier]

Oh great, now their attempting slandering Napster's legacy in Europe

I don't think people will adopt Napster as "quickly" in Europe (I use "quickly" quite loosly) as they did in the US.

From what I understand, copyright laws aren't as severe (or enforced) as they are in the US.

Free P2P will live on in Europe and in the rest of the world as well!! :good job:

[Malicious Intent]

But they are catching it early in the UK. File sharing isn't as big here and broadband take up is slow. Unlike in the US, by the time everyone has superfast connections, the legal services will be ready and waiting, with their brand name on peoples lips, rather than names like Kazaa.

[Bombardier]

the legal services will be ready and waiting, with their brand name on peoples lips, rather than names like Kazaa.

That is unfortunate, but not unexpected. Hopefully another "Kazaa" will come along (preferably one with more anonymity), and bring P2P back into the global spotlight.

In a way, I don't think it really left. Those damn "legal" services are stealing away some potential P2Pers. That hurts the P2P community as a whole to some degree.

[Guest .::BeatFactory::.]

If it keeps the recording industry at bay and not worried about suing people into file sharing legally, then I'm all for it. Then it'll be just like when Napster was discovered by a bunch of us and was more underground. We still got our music, it just wasn't a thing everyone used.

[Bombardier]

If it keeps the recording industry at bay and not worried about suing people into file sharing legally, then I'm all for it. Then it'll be just like when Napster was discovered by a bunch of us and was more underground. We still got our music, it just wasn't a thing everyone used.

Quite true.

I wouldn't mind if music song swapping was pushed back into the underground. I am no stranger to the underground internet and that's where I downloaded my first few mp3s back over five years ago.

For those who are persistant enough and know where to look, there will always be what they want online.