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Napster and Best Buy Joining Forces
Ruds writes "Best Buy will market a music service co-branded with Napster. Napster will give Best Buy stock valued up to $10 million, and they'll share marketing costs. From the story: 'The retail chain will feature Napster products in its brick-and-mortar stores and demonstrate the service through interactive kiosks throughout the nation. Napster will also support Best Buy's artist promotions.'"
We've also had Napster and Rhapsody products in the store; but we used Rhapsody on all of the store kiosks. More than likely all this means is that we'll be using Napster instead of Rhapsody on our kiosks in the stores.
What?
What can I say, but www.allofmp3.com
,dave
Download songs in your choise of format AND enoding bit rate.
All for 3 cents per song.
And, it is legal (in Russia).
P.S. My daughter (the 18 year old iPod junkie) thinks it is great.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
I saw Napster stuff on the shelves in there a couple days ago...made no sense to me then, and even less now. It was good, now its gone, let the brand die for gods sake.
Actually, this might be different than what you saw. The intention here is that Napster and Best Buy will be marketing music together, instead of idependently. This is interesting for a number of reasons:
1: Napster is currently in a rather weak position when it comes to promotion. Let's face it, their credibility is zilch with the fickle internet-enabled teens and early-twenty-somethings. Corporate brass, aka "Blue-Haired's", don't sway so easily and still see the Napster name as something the kids are into. This alone is dangerous territory. (And I agree with you, the Napster brand should just be allowed to die on it's own.) And this younger crowd is where roughly 80% of the music industry gets their paycheck.
2: Best Buy sells music as a loss leader to get people in the stores to buy other things, mainly product accessories where margins are at their highest. This loss leader approach is a proven, successful marketing technique, especially for Best Buy.
The Best Buy/Napster deal makes sense due to one last interesting item:
3: Best Buy typically buys proven, successful solutions to expand their business, instead of developing anything in-house. I cite Geek Squad as my prime example, and there are plenty of others if someone else decides to do the rest of my homework for me.
But how Best Buy can see Napster as a successful entity is beyond me. Perhaps they see value into bringing it under it's own umbrella of operations and making it work for them instead of with them. Direct control would certainly be easier, which might just be what Best Buy is aiming for.
Otherwise, I think Best Buy got wound up stuck with some magic beans...
My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
I worked for Best Buy less than 3 months ago for about a year in the PCHO(that's personal computer, home office to you outsiders)/Software department. Those little Napster demo disks and subscription kiosks have been in most Best Buy stores since before Thanksgiving, 2003. We employees were briefed on the future of the "BestNap" alliance way back then and even had a Napster rep visit several times, handing out Napster demo subscriptions, nifty little badges, keychains and necklaces advetising Napster. The usual fare brought to us by reps, nothing different. The only oddity was the fact that I began my internet career upon exposure to Napster at its very beginning as a fringe underground utility only to see it represented at my job by a slick gentleman in a suit and tie!!!