Napster joins crowded field

2003-10-10 13:46

New York - Napster, which helped popularise online music before being shut down as a hub for piracy, is being relaunched as a legal website, its new owner said on Thursday.

The "new" Napster, to be available in the United States from October 29, will bear little resemblance to the original site, which had a following of as many as 70 million fans worldwide who were able to swap and download music for free.

The original Napster went bankrupt amid a flood of litigation from the industry. It was acquired last year by music software firm Roxio, which is relaunching it using a model employed by Apple Computer and others.

But the new site, dubbed Napster 2.0, in addition to offering a-la-carte downloads for 99 cents, will offer a monthly subscription allowing unlimited listening and downloading.

It also claims to have the largest digital music library in the world with over 500 000 songs.

"Napster invented online music and we are reinventing it with Napster 2.0," said Chris Gorog, chairman and chief executive of Roxio.

"Napster 2.0 is unequivocally the most complete and comprehensive music service in the world."

A symbol

Napster became a symbol of the movement to use the internet to exchange music and other content for free. Its popularity sparked a fierce legal and public relations campaign by the music industry, which claimed Napster and its imitators made a mockery of copyright protection.

Napster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March 2002 after a federal court ruled it was a tool for widespread piracy.

The new Napster will allow anyone with a PC to freely sample the company's online collection, "burn" CDs and transfer music to portable devices. But it will be done with permission of the copyright holders.

The Napster service will have support from Microsoft, being compatible with the software giant's Windows Media Player software and integrated into the new Media Centre version of Windows.

Napster will also be pre-loaded on Gateway computers. And Korean electronics group Samsung is working with the firm on a "Napster compatible" portable music device.

Crowded field

But Napster will enter an increasingly crowded field of companies selling music online.

In addition to Apple - which has sold some 10 million songs to Macintosh users through its iTunes online store and plans to offer a similar service for PC users - Dell said recently it would launch a music store this year.

Musicmatch and buymusic.com are already offering downloads under a similar plan, and other services are expected by year-end.

- AFP