Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
Napster reported they’ve doubled the customer base within a year by reaching 500,000 subscribers but the company may still be saying “bye, bye” to us soon. According to a Digital Music News report, all possible scenarios are considered within the company (massive layoffs, liquidation, fire sale). With the iTMS owning 83% of the market, there’s [...]
Music stores brand awareness is an iTunes & Napster game: “American downloaders aged 12 and older are nearly equally as likely to be aware of Napster 2.0 and iTunes on a top-of-mind basis (31% vs. 27%, respectively); when prompted with actual brand names, more than four out of five (79%) of downloaders recognize the Napster [...]
Rhapsody announced today that it won’t require its users to use special software to access the service, since they’re launching a Web-based interface. Any PC/Mac/Linux user can point his browser to ‘rhapsody.com’ and, according to Red Herring, stream up to 25 songs per session, for free (song downloads are not available for now).
What’s the business [...]
Napster increases bitrate to 192kbps: from the current 128kbps, with the release of version 3.5 of their music download software. Quality-wise, they’re now on the same league as Yahoo! Music Unlimited. A welcome change, especially since it comes at no added cost. I wish I could say “here’s to hoping iTMS does the same soon!”, [...]
Comparing the front page of several online music stores: the iTMS, Rhapsody, MSN Music, and Napster with the latter sucking the most: “the company is so busy selling itself it doesn’t spend much time selling music.” [via]