Like the incontinent, obscenity-shouting, obstreperous elderly relative unloaded at the retirement home because they’ve become just another irritable mouth to feed, Napster has dumped its streaming music service, which you could access for free thanks to what they probably hoped would be huge ad sales, into a barely acknowledged separate site, pretty much ending its attempt at giving users something for nothing after about 12 months:
But the offering has since disappeared from napster.com, where users can only access the paid platform. In response to inquiries, Napster told Digital Music News that the free service is now offered through free.napster.com, though this alternate address has not been linked from the main napster.com page. In fact, the shift towards the less-prominent free.napster.com happened in May of this year with little fanfare.
Discussing the change, Napster COO Christopher Allen noted that the “focus continues to be on our music subscription service,” and pointed to a largely experimental period during the summer of 2006. The ad-supported initiative aimed to diversify existing, subscription-based revenue streams while offering a lower entry-point for would-be subscribers.
Perhaps they intended this ill-fated carrot of free music to offset the fact that their service can’t be used in conjunction with something called an “iPod”. Someone needs to put this mutt of a company down already.
Napster Quietly Buries Free, Ad-Supported Initiative [Digital Music News via Coolfer]
Hey, Universal Music and NBC — how’s that whole “fighting back at the evil Apple empire” thing going? I hear those alternate channels and streaming models are doing just swell.
You’d think after the Imus incident, we’d be free from such a vile company.