Squeezebox owners: You can now access Napster music right from your your WiFi boombox.
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Best Buy will be acquiring Napster for around $121 million as the two companies have announced they’ve “entered into a definitive merger agreement” for Best Buy to scoop up all of Napster’s outstanding shares at $2.65. The deal will include all 700,000 Napster subscribers, Napster’s web-based platform, and key employees.

Best Buy already has a digital music initiative that’s powered by Rhapsody, so it’ll remain to be seen what happens with that. I’m guessing the company might just switch those users over to the new platform. We may also see Best Buy further develop its house brand of Insignia digital music players, possibly with some sort of package deals including Napster service.

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Napster’s had it up to here (pointing near the top of my head) and wants to regain its position as the King of Online Music. The new Napster web store opened its doors today and features six million DRM-free tracks, most for 99 cents apiece and most full albums for $9.99, according to Reuters. You can still opt for subscription pricing at around $15 per month if you have a Napster-to-Go compatible portable player.

With this new DRM-free structure, Napster hopes to win away fans of Apple’s iTunes, which also sells certain DRM-free tracks, although many other tracks use Fairplay DRM and can only be used on Apple iPod and iPhone devices (unless you burn the tracks to a CD and then rip them back into iTunes as unprotected MP3 files). Napster’s service allows you to automatically transfer any purchased tracks into iTunes as unrestricted MP3 files that can then be transferred onto an Apple device.

Napster [Napster.com]

They used to be good.

Metallica gave hints in an interview with Rolling Stone that it will follow the Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead model of Internet-based music distribution. (You can already download live show MP3s and FLACs, for the record.) Says Lars Ulrich:

We’ve been observing Radiohead and Trent Reznor and in twenty-seven years or however long it takes for the next record, we’ll be looking forward to everything in terms of possibilities with the Internet.

Unfortunately for Metallica, they released an album called St. Anger back in 2003, universally condemned as the worst piece of recorded music in history. “Madly in anger,” really? What does that even mean?

Oh, and they also helped kill Napster. That’s not how you win friends.

via Slashdot

Eliot Van Buskirk was sick — sick! — of paying for music download services. Now that Amazon is DRM-free and offers lots of music, he decided to cancel all of his music subscriptions. Yahoo was the easiest at about 1 minute but it took him 30 minutes to cancel Napster and 10 minutes to cancel Rhapsody. This reminds me of trying to cancel my XBox Live and MS SPOT subscriptions. Microsoft hides most of their cancellation systems behind languid representatives in a call center somewhere in Bangalore, ensuring anger all around.

Why (And How) I Just Canceled All My Music Subscriptions [Wired]

Sorry for the delay, folks. I was busy fondling my Kindle yesterday and seemed to have left this one slip through the cracks. AT&T and Samsung announced the SLM yesterday, which is the first phone to feature Napster Mobile. On top of that it also has video share (3G!), stereo Bluetooth, and a 2-megapixel camera. Internal memory is a bit skimpy at only 50MB split between media and photos. The SLM will be available on the 23rd for $150 after a $50 rebate.

Hey, hipsters! Put down your hacky-sacks for a few minutes and hear me lay down this smack! AT&T (the “Fun Network”) and Napster (”The service you used to steal all your music from”) are teaming up to offer 5 million songs over the air for $7.49 a month for 5 songs per month or $1.99 per single. What’s that, cool kittens and kiddios? That’s too much for a stupid single on a phone that your probably don’t want to listen to music on anyway because that is not a North American usage model and this entire deal smacks of desperation on Napster’s part because they’re trying to sell themselves and 63 million “subscribers” would definitely sweeten the deal? You emo kids are so hyper-critical and knee-jerk reactionary. What are you going to do? Picket the sale in your Che t-shirt, skinny jeans, and Chuck Taylors? These are big corporations. Just take your $1.99 music and shut up.

TC via Press Release

Napster is rolling out its over-the-air (OTA) music service on Japan’s NTT Docomo. The service lets Napster To Go subscribers download music onto compatible cellphones (so far, the 904i series). All songs downloaded onto cellphones can then be transferred to compatible music players and PCs. Can iTunes do that?

This is fun and all, and something many people wish the iPhone would be able to do right out of the box, but until Napster brings it over here, it might as well not exist. The monthly subscription fee seems like overkill if you’re the type of person who only downloads (well, legally) one or two songs per month. But good luck to Napster and all its future endeavors.

Press Release

You’d think that with 5 million music services already in the works that Circuit City and Napster would think twice about teaming up. No such luck. The company will sell subscription services — essentially Napster — for $14.95 per month. The chain will probably sell a co-branded player which will probably fail.

Circuit City, Napster to offer joint music service [Reuters]

WWE and Napster for some video and music hotness.

Also, we’ll be seeing a new phone from Apple – something called the iPhone – officially available in June with no delays. The reps said data and mobile use is going to go through the roof when the device launches, suggesting some sort of all-you-can-eat plan (similar to what they have for Blackberry users or their 3G unlimited data plans).

Press Release [via Reuters]

Back when pirating music was in vogue, a guy named Shawn Fanning made a little program called Napster. It enabled P2P file sharing and piracy to skyrocket in less than a year. So after Shawn sold Napster, got some cash, and got sued, he apparently sat down and got really into this game you may have heard of: World of Warcraft.

Fanning is now working on a social networking site called Rupture, which is named after a Rogue talent found in WoW. The concept is sound and bringing WoW players together outside the game is a great idea, but what does Fanning want to do exactly?

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