Roxio wraps Napster for Christmas
The new service, Napster 2.0, will likely debut with the largest legal music catalogue in the world with close to half a million songs, Chris Gorog, chief executive of the CD-burning software company, said in a Monday interview.
He declined to comment on the price of a subscription, as well as on what each song would cost on per-song basis for the relaunch of Napster, the song-swapping pioneer that was shut down by copyright infringement lawsuits in 2001.
The details of the launch comes amid plans later this year for online music services from several other players including AOL Time Warner's America Online and services from retailers such as Buy.com and Amazon.com.
Users of Napster's new service will be able to search for music, listen to preprogrammed radio that is customized to their tastes and also will be able to burn CDs and download music to other devices, Gorog said.
"It will be very reflective of the key characteristics of the original Napster, which is independence, innovation and freedom of choice and empowering consumers to do exactly what they want to do and navigate and search to their personal tastes," Gorog said.
Roxio bought the assets of Napster last year for about $5 million at bankruptcy auction and bought the Pressplay music service this year.
Gorog said about 97 percent of online music users recognize the Napster brand, and half of those have indicated they would be interested in paying for a service.
Industry players have said that music labels have been more receptive to recent digital music plans but that some artists are still resistant to the online movement.
"We have found the labels have been much more liberal in terms of usage rules. Certainly there are some artist holdouts, but we are finding the holdout artists to be very receptive to the new Napster," Gorog said, adding that it has not yet started testing the new service.
He also declined to comment on when Roxio expected to make back its investment in Napster and Pressplay, adding that the company has not yet revealed its financial business model.
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