napster

Three years ago, when Napster and Microsoft were close partners, Napster was one of several music stores whose interface was embedded in Windows Media Player 10. I tested it along with some other Windows Media-based stores, but I found the service hampered by a nearly unusable interface.… Read more

Other than its first reported quarter of positive cash flow, Napster has enjoyed a relatively unremarkable year--at least on the surface. It is now apparent, however, that plenty of tinkering has been going on in the background.

The company on Tuesday announced a fairly significant redesign to its music service and software. The new Napster, version 4, is lighter and a bit simpler--and it definitely appears to take some cues from RealNetworks' Rhapsody.

Of particular note are the launch of a Web-based version of the service, which will enable Mac and Linux users to join in the fun, and the … Read more

UPDATE (12:15 p.m. PDT Friday): CNET News.com interviewed Snocap CEO Rusty Rueff after this story was published. He says the company's music stores just weren't catching on fast enough and its time to sell the company. You can read what he has to say in this story.

Snocap, the music-licensing company best known for being the follow-up act of Napster founder Shawn Fanning, has cut its staff by 60 percent, a spokeswoman for the company said Thursday evening.

Founded in 2002 by Fanning, Jordan Mendelson, and Ron Conway, Snocap started out trying to provide digital-music … Read more

You'd think it would've drawn crowds.

TechCrunch founder and controversial Valley 2.0 icon Michael Arrington was making a rare appearance in New York, moderating a panel at the DigitalLife trade show on Thursday night. And the panel in question, called "The Disruptors," included a few of the start-up world's hottest names: Napster, Plaxo, and Facebook veteran Sean Parker (currently of the Founders Fund); Oovoo CEO Philippe Schwartz; SpinVox co-founder Daniel Doulton; IGA Worldwide CEO Justin Townsend; and Ooma founder Andrew Frame. Considering the resurgence of tech culture and startup spirit in New York in … Read more

MyStrands provides event goers with an easy way to interact with their surroundings using their mobile phones. The derivative of PartyStrands got a substantial update this week. The service (which we covered in November) has rolled out a few new tools for users to host similar features in their own homes.

MyStrands now lets you pull from Napster's music library to host music for parties. Users can browse through Napster tracks using the MyStrands app and play any full song for free up to three times, without actually having to use Napster. There's also an indie-artist radio player, … Read more

AOL. Napster. Partnership. Imagine if those three words had been put together in a sentence way back in 1999. It would've been something out of The Onion: AOL was the massive, dominant corporate giant, and Napster was pretty much a bunch of punks who were raising hell. But times change, and companies change, and today AOL has announced that it has inked a deal with the music subscription service--formerly synonymous with cyber-piracy--as the power behind the download service on its AOL Music site.

Napster will be replacing the AOL MusicNow subscription download service, which AOL had been operating since … Read more