Napster To Be Acquired by Google?

YesSir writes "The New York Post claims that Google is considering an alliance or possibly an acquisition of Napster. Rather then starting their own, Google could jump start their music service with the help of Napster. Napster's share price soared more than 30 percent as a result of the report that they are in discussions with Google." From the article: " The company in January told Reuters that it was not on the block. 'The company is not looking to be sold, the management is not looking to step out. It's simply not true,' a Napster spokesman said on Jan. 23. Last week, Napster, founded by college student Shawn Fanning and was once synonymous with the pirating of music, laid off 10 managers." More information available from C|Net. Update: 01/31 19:16 GMT by Z : A Reuters article has Google denying that it has plans to acquire Napster or start a music store anytime soon.

Isn't that really Roxio who bought the name?

[Anonymous Coward]

Napster, founded by college student Shawn Fanning, as far as I can tell doesn't really exist any more. AFAIR Roxio bought it because they had a brand that meant "mediocre software" and wanted a brand/name that meant "cool".

Too many google rumors....

[ChrisGilliard]

Remember earlier this month, we had this: this [slashdot.org]. I've even heard people rumor that Google will be building a Space Elevator. Where do these people come up with this stuff? Who knows, this one could be right, but there's still a lot of these out there.

Ummm...

[TubeSteak]

Is this only news because Google is supposedly not buying Napster?

How is Napster even relevant anymore?

Raise your hand if you use Napster's service.
Now everyone who has iTunes, raise your hand.

Napster was the first on the market with a pay-for-music service and they still couldn't turn that into a leading position.

This reminds me of...

[Eightyford]

This reminds me of the spending spree done by tech companies during the stock price boom of the late 90's. Google has now found themselves with a shit load of cash, and they figure they better do something with it before people realise how overvalued the stock is.

cahnge in strategy

[pvt_medic]

I think what gave google the initial boost was just how it came up with its own way of doing things and how it tried to be unique. Goodle products were made by google people, and many of them were a result of employees just thinking up new ways to do things. Sure not always it was ground breaking, but they tried approaching challenges with a different perspective. If google starts buying up areas that it wants to expand to it will loose its charm. I think they are already beginning to face this challenge and loose some popularity because of their actions. Google wake up, every thing you do now is going to be scrutinized.

Re:Google Digest? Googleback?

[generic-man]

Just uncheck YRO. If I wanted to see fake lawyers yelling at each other I'd watch The People's Court.

The buffet is losing out to a la carte

[Y-Crate]

When the iTunes store first opened, a lot of people at /. bitched and moaned about how terrible it was that you were forced to buy individual songs or albums. Who would want to do that when you can pay a monthly fee and listen to everything in the catalog with a subscription service?

As it turns out, a lot of people actually.

The "all you can eat" method sounds great in theory, but the tracks from the major subscription services are often saddled with layers of rules and restrictions well beyond those you find with iTunes. Extra fees for moving them to portable music devices, extra fees for burning them to CDs and oh yeah...when you stop paying your monthly fee, everything goes away. Hundreds of dollars over years gone with one missed payment. All that money and you own absolutely *nothing*.

iTunes is not perfect, iTunes has problems. The artists do get far, far less than they should, but that is due to the way the contracts are written between the labels and the artists. Yes, you are restricted to playing (but not storing) the songs to any 5 computers at once (which you can change as often as you like). No, Steve Jobs can't lower the prices to 10 cents a track like you so often hear the uninformed claim. Yes, you can put the songs on as many iPods as you want without restriction. No, you can't get higher-bitrate tracks even though that should be an option. Etc.

At the end of the day, however...you can buy one song for 99 cents and that song will be there for you to play today, tomorrow and next year, the year after, etc. Wherever you want, whenever you want. You can buy that one song, buy 1,000 songs it doesn't matter. You only pay when you want to pay, and you don't feel compelled to justify what you spend each month, because unlike Napster and the Yahoo! Music Store, you only get what you pay for, and you only pay for what you get.

The dominance of the iPod, and its incompatibility with the other services is only part of the reason iTunes' competition is withering on the vine. People want to feel like they are left with something at the end of the day, and iTunes delivers that better than anyone else.

Re:raphsody is more popular

[westlake]

Windows is now required to watch porn with some codecs which is hurting Linux.

What hurts Linux is the success of DRM'd media rentals and sales. When one click synchronizes your downloads to multiple devices, high-def for your plasma TV, low-def for the backseat of your SUV, the list grows to millions of tracks and titles, perhaps the entire RIAA and MPAA catalog, and the monthly fees remain within budget, no one will give a damn about "freedom."

Re:The buffet is losing out to a la carte

[Breakfast Pants]

"and oh yeah...when you stop paying your monthly fee, everything goes away. Hundreds of dollars over years gone with one missed payment. All that money and you own absolutely *nothing*." If you are going to make criticism at least understand how the system works. If you miss a payment, you can simply pay again next month *and still get all the songs you had before*. What you are saying happens doesn't make any sense. Lets say I join netflix, if I miss a month's payment, when I join back I don't have to do something to build back up to having access to netflix's full catalog: the same thing applies here. So it's not if you miss *a* month; it's if you quit subscribing permenantly.

Re:Google isn't fun anymore (tm).

[PastAustin]

<opinion>Grow up. Google isn't your internet based teddy bear.
Google is like every other company. They want to make money. They are out to make money and they'd better make a lot since they've just hired tons of new people.

I am so sick of hearing tons of people (not just /.ers) refer to Google as some evil corperation who is going to take over the world. They may. Maybe they have plans to do so. I don't know but honestly how can anyone on this website claim to know their plan?

Everyone is complaining that Google is bowing to some evil government. Well you know what I would have done the same. Better to have censored searching rather than no searching. I mean a lot of places have chinese versions of their site. Are they not censoring? Are they evil? Google seems to be a company who a lot of people like (and look up to) and since a lot of people like them they are expected to be angels and turn down everything that makes money. If half of you got the chance you'd sell a censored version of your own software to china if it made a buck. Not even to mention you'd be doing it 100% out of profit, not to open the doors a little.

Google may not be the most wonderful company but on the list of good corperations they're still on the top of my list. I think people need to give them a little slack and let things play out. When Google does something they do it well (after it is out of beta). I think that before pointing fingers you all should look at yourselves. We all have our pricetag and I don't think anyone has found Google's. They haven't been bought and they haven't done enough bad to destroy all the good they've done.</opinion>