Bankrupt internet song-swapping service Napster, skewered by the courts for encouraging piracy, may be on the verge of a comeback through a marriage with Pressplay, The New York Times reported on Monday.
Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment are close to a deal to sell their struggling online music service to Roxio, the company that bought the remains of Napster in a bankruptcy auction last year, it said.
Roxio would pay $30-million in cash and stock for the subscriber-based service, started three years ago as a legal alternative to Napster and similar services.
Pressplay charges a monthly fee of about $10 for access to an online music library, and has about 50 000 subscribers, the paper added.
Millions of people are still swapping music files online for free, using services like Morpheus and Grokster that sprang up after the demise of Napster. But in April a judge ruled that owners of those services cannot be held liable for copyright infringement because — unlike Napster — they do not use their own computers to store the files.
Most paying online music services are struggling, but Apple Computer’s well-advertised pay-per-download service sold more than two million tracks in its first two weeks, the report said.
Now Universal and Sony are hoping to benefit from Napster’s still excellent name recognition.
Under the deal, which could be announced on Monday, they would take an equity stake in Roxio, which in turn would get access to 300 000 music tracks from major labels and the Pressplay distribution system.
A source close to Roxio said focus groups have shown 98% name recognition for Napster, versus 12% for Pressplay.
Napster roared across the internet in 1999 when founder and then-college student Shawn Fanning invented a method by which users could easily pass files from computer to computer over the World Wide Web.
At its peak, Napster claimed some 70-million users who could access and pass along a vast collection of music titles freely.
But the music industry contended it facilitated rampant piracy of copyrighted music, and the court battles eventually led to its demise. – Sapa-AFP