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Technology Stocks : Napster, Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. K. G. who wrote (31)	3/8/2005 9:23:00 AM
From: Ron	Respond to of 44

Napster to go rollout: biz.yahoo.com Some buying premarket here.

To: D. K. G. who wrote (31)	3/17/2005 8:02:03 AM
From: D. K. G.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 44

'Napster To Go' Offers Alternative to iTunes -- If You Keep On Paying March 17, 2005; Page B1 PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY By WALTER S. MOSSBERG Apple's iTunes online music-download store dominates the digital music market. It has brushed off threats from multiple competitors. But now, a new type of online music service is launching what may be the stiffest test Apple Computer has faced in music. This new service is called Napster To Go. It's a fresh iteration of the Napster legal music service, and it offers users a completely different model for buying and playing music, a model that Apple can't match today. With iTunes, you buy new songs for 99 cents each. Once the songs are downloaded to a Windows or Macintosh computer, you own them forever and can do what you like with them, within certain limits. You can store them on multiple PCs, and copy them to an unlimited number of iPod music players. This has worked so well that Apple has sold more than 300 million songs. But there's a downside to Apple's system: If you're a heavy music purchaser, buying thousands of new songs will cost thousands of dollars. Napster To Go also allows you to download songs and to copy them onto a portable player. But Napster To Go doesn't charge for each song; in fact, Napster doesn't really sell them to you. Instead, it rents the music, for a monthly subscription fee of $14.95. As long as you pay the monthly fee, you can download as many tracks as you want. So, if you're inclined to download thousands of tracks, you're not out thousands of dollars. For some time now, Napster and other online services, like RealNetworks' Rhapsody and Yahoo's Musicmatch, have offered subscription services that allowed unlimited downloads to a PC -- but not a portable player -- for a monthly fee. What's new about Napster To Go is that these songs can be copied to compatible portable players from companies including Creative Labs, iRiver and Dell. That makes the service a stronger competitor to Apple's iTunes and iPod combination. Until the addition of portability, Napster and the other subscription plans had attracted a solid audience, but they hadn't been able to mount a major challenge to Apple. Now, with the addition of portability, Napster believes it can attract a large audience of music fans who want to try large amounts of music without a big out-of-pocket expense. RealNetworks and other subscription companies are expected to add a similar portability option in the coming months. Apple has scoffed at the rental/subscription model. But if it takes off, the computer maker may be forced to respond with its own subscription service. I've been testing Napster To Go with one of the best compatible players, the iRiver H10. The Napster software used to access the service isn't as well designed, or as simple to use, as iTunes; and none of the compatible players is as good as an iPod. But the combination worked pretty well. There is one huge downside to the Napster approach. If you stop paying your monthly fee, the music dies. The song files will become inert and unplayable unless Napster is able to verify that you continue to be a subscriber in good standing. In fact, you have to log onto the service with a PC at least once a month and plug in your portable player so that Napster can verify your paid status. This means that, if you build a huge music collection through Napster, you could lose all of it -- every single song, going back to when you started -- if you ever halt the monthly payments, however high they may go in the future. If you want to keep a song permanently, in the Apple fashion, you have to pay the same 99 cents a track Apple charges, on top of your $14.95 monthly fee. (Napster will sell you bulk credits for buying songs permanently that can lower the cost to around 79 cents a track.) There are some other downsides to Napster To Go. Downloaded songs can be stored only on up to three computers, not the five machines Apple allows; and each PC can copy music to only three portable players, not the unlimited number in Apple's system. You can't burn rented songs to a CD; you have to first buy them for 99 cents. Napster does have one nice feature iTunes lacks: It can synchronize your downloaded music among several computers, so they all have the same songs. But Napster can be far more confusing to use than iTunes. Not all songs can be rented. Some can only be purchased. Others can only be rented, and not purchased. The Napster software is also clumsier than iTunes. You can't see the status of downloads or of song transfers to a portable player without switching to a separate window. Searching for music, and creating playlists, is more awkward than in iTunes. Also, in my tests of Napster To Go on three different PCs, I ran into repeated problems transferring rented songs to the iRiver player. Several times the transfer process choked, and I had to quit and start over. In one case, I received a mystifying error message that read: "I/O operation has been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request." I have never had such problems with iTunes. Still, Napster To Go offers a real alternative to Apple's offering. It will be interesting to see how the market responds.

To: D. K. G. who wrote (31)	4/5/2005 10:17:03 AM
From: D. K. G.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 44

Napster Ends First Full Fiscal Year With Over 410,000 Subscribers; Raises Fourth Quarter Revenue Guidance Tuesday April 5, 6:30 am ET LOS ANGELES, April 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Napster, Inc. (Nasdaq: NAPS - News), the biggest brand in digital music, announced today that its subscriber base grew by 143,000 in the fourth quarter, raising Napster's subscriber base to a total of over 410,000, including 56,000 university subscribers. This represents a sequential quarterly increase in subscribers of over 53% percent and continues Napster's rapid growth rate of its subscriber base and its pioneering Napster To Go(TM) portable subscription service, the first of its kind in the world. Based on strong subscriber uptake and stronger than anticipated sales of downloads to subscribers, Napster is raising its fourth quarter revenue estimate to between $16.5 and $17.5 million. ADVERTISEMENT "We believe Napster continues to be the fastest growing music subscription service in the industry and we are very pleased with the excitement demonstrated by consumers and the press over Napster To Go," said Chris Gorog, Napster's chairman and CEO. "Our innovative Napster To Go marketing campaign has lead to a very strong increase in consumer awareness as music fans are 'doing the math' and discovering the incredible value and excitement of a Napster subscription. We were also delighted to see that our new Napster To Go subscribers exhibited a strong appetite for purchasing pay-per-download music as well and are therefore raising our sales guidance for the quarter." In the weeks since its launch, Napster To Go has received significant critical acclaim in leading business and consumer media outlets including the Associated Press, CNET, The New York Times, The San Jose Mercury News and USA Today and was recently named Editors Choice and Product of the Month by PC Magazine. In addition, prominent industry analysts have shown keen support of Napster's digital music subscription model. Quarterly Conference Call Information Napster's management will host a conference call to discuss its fourth quarter and fiscal 2005 results on May 11, 2005 at 2 PM PT. To participate on the call, analysts and investors may dial 800-218-0713. The call will also be webcast from the investor relations section of the Napster website at www.napster.com. About Napster Napster, the biggest brand in digital music, is a subscription service that enables fans to freely sample the world's largest and most diverse online collection of music and move an unlimited amount of songs to compatible MP3 players. Napster (www.napster.com) members have access to songs from all major labels and hundreds of independents and have more ways to discover, share and acquire new music and old favorites with community features like the ability to email tracks to friends and browse other members' collections. Napster also offers Napster Light, a "lighter" version of the service for those who just want to purchase songs and albums a la carte. Napster is currently available in the United States, Canada and the U.K. and is headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in San Jose, San Diego, New York and London. Safe Harbor Statement Except for historical information, the matters discussed in this press release, in particular matters related to Napster's future revenue and the continued and future success of Napster To Go are forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties such as decreased demand for our products and services; flaws inherent in our products or services; failure of our products to interoperate with the hardware products of our customers, intense competition; failure to maintain relationships with strategic partners and content providers, and general economic conditions, that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Additional information on these and other factors are contained in Napster's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the Company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q as filed with the SEC on February 9, 2005, copies of which are available at the website maintained by the SEC at sec.gov. Napster assumes no obligation to update the forward- looking statements included in this press release. Copyright © 2005 Napster, LLC All Rights Reserved. Napster, the Napster Kitty Logo, Napster To Go and Napster Light are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Napster, LLC in the United States and/or other countries. Napster Contact: Dana M. Harris Napster 310-281-5073 dana.harris@napster.com Investor and Media Contacts: Alex Wellins or Jennifer Jarman The Blueshirt Group 415-217-7722 alex@blueshirtgroup.com; jennifer@blueshirtgroup.com