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Napster Joins DRM-free Bandwagon, Raises Rates
Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 3:00 PM - by Jeff Gamet
The online music service Napster revealed on Sunday that it plans to offer copy protection-free music downloads by spring. The DRM-free tracks, however, will only be available through music purchases, and Napster’s subscription customers will still face music copy protection measures while also seeing a hike in their monthly service fees, according to Forbes.
Napster’s CEO Chris Gorog commented "The ubiquity and cross-platform compatibility of MP3s should create a more level playing field for music services and hardware providers and result in greater ease of use and broader adoption of digital music."
The move to offer MP3 files without copy protection means that Napster can potentially grow its customer base to include users with a much wider range of portable media devices -- including Apple’s iPod and iPhone. Currently, Napster offers its music in Microsoft’s proprietary WMA format with digital rights management copy protection, limiting use to Windows PCs and the much smaller non-iPod media player market.
The company will also raise its basic subscription service rate at the end of January from US$9.95 a month up to $12.95 a month, and plans to continue focusing primarily on its monthly subscription services.
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