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According to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch, Napster may be up for sale. He also points out that Napster is not a healthy company. Maybe selling off Roxio was not such a good idea. Hate to say I told you so.
Napster announced today that they have hired the investment bank UBS to assist them in selling the company. Arrington points out that “getting Napster to profitability isn’t going to happen in this very crowded music market. Napster does not offer the best, or cheapest, product in either category.”
Napter’s brand has never been able to make the jump from FREE to pay-for music. Using Microsoft’s DRM for subscription services has not done much to cut into Apple’s iTunes-iPod turf. Recently Napster was offering free mp3 players just to get subscribers. Now as Microsoft plans to compete against its own partners with its coming Zune and its marketplace this should further cut into Napster’s business.
Napster’s stock has been dropping. Here is the chart for the last 2 years.
Is Napster, a Microsoft’s Zune victim? Maybe the writing is on the wall and Napster wants out while they can still sell for a lot of money. What do you think?
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| Tags: Apple, iPod, iTunes, napster, zune
Unfortunately I think Napster is a victim of the Zune. Still suprized Zune will have a proprietary DRM system.
I would count RealNetworks in on the victim list as they have announced they will soon be using their own DRM instead of the one from Redmond. Urge/MTV partner has already made public comments about the Zune and Microsoft and being left out so far. I think we can safely say that the Microsoft unraveling of partners has clearly started and Zune has not even seen the light of day yet. It will be interesting to see what happens if the iTunes Store clobbers Amazon Unbox and Cinema Now as it seems Apple has a great start with only selling Disney so far in Movies.