Napster's Offer Doesn't Add Up

from the doing-the-math dept

TheStreet tried to do the math on Napster's $1 billion offer to the record labels and they claim that the numbers don't add up. The numbers are somewhat back of the envelope, and I'd hope that Napster did a slightly more detailed calculation, but it is something that's important. My guess is that the hope is that Napster becomes the standard for all music trading - at which point it won't seem like such a big deal for people to pay their $60/year to get on board. And, if that doesn't happen, then they go out of business anyway, and the payment issue goes away. Over here, we have Business Week doing the math which they say is doable. However, they point out other problems with the concept - and suggest that these industry attempts are only going to add to problems because they're not giving consumers what they want - which is simplicity.