Napster CEO Hilbers Stepping down
from the nail-in-the-coffin dept
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Conran Hilbers is stepping down as Napster's CEO and the company will probably file for backruptacy(paid subscription req.). As one former Napster insider told us just a few minutes ago, this was inevitable after acquisition talks with Bertelsmann fizzled. Napster shook up the music industry and made the debate over digital content rights front page news. It also showed the power the Internet holds for digital content distribution. In the end though, Napster shot itself in the foot early on when it took a very adverserial role against the record industry. By the time they tried to work with the industry they had already alienated too many key players. Now the most fans of digital music services can hope for is that MusicNet and PressPlay drastically improve their services. We're not holding our breath for that to happen any time soon. Update:Here's the news.com article. At the time of the orginal post the WSJ article was the only one available.
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Oh well. RIP Napster.
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