Merger Of The Also Rans: Rhapsody Buys Napster
from the too-late dept
With so much attention paid to the new generation of music subscription offerings, Spotify, Rdio and Mog, it appears that the last generation, Napster and Rhapsody, decided the best course of action was to join forces in bitterness at the fact no one mentions either of them any more. The two companies have gone through a variety of different owners over the past decade or so, with Rhapsody being spun out from RealNetworks last year, and Napster being under the Best Buy umbrella for a while -- where almost nothing was done to build up the service. I recognize that the two companies may be annoyed that no one cares about them any more, but I really can't see either establishing enough of a presence to get back into the conversation.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: mergers, music, subscription
Companies: best buy, napster, rhapsody
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Zero + Zero = Zero
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Zero + Zero = Zero
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Zero + Zero = Zero
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Zero + Zero = Zero
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
And subscriber info? like what, names linked to email addresses? I could probably get a valid list of 1,000,000 sorted by net income, in a few days for less than a few hundred bucks. maybe even legally.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not true...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Rhapsody
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Rhapsody
It is possible to turn off the Facebook announcement of your playing Facebook's favorite song: "Ooops, I did it again", and when it comes to the always running thing, clicking close on the program closes it's window, but you can completely close the program by selecting Exit from the File menu...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You're forgetting....
The fact that this news is spreading across most major tech sites proves that people are at least still interested in hearing about Rhapsody. I would argue that if RDIO or MOG were buying Napster, it wouldn't be spreading near as much.
I don't think Rhapsody is going down anytime soon.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What to call em?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Napster/Rhapsody
I wish Rhapsody luck!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]