Tech Confidential submits: Music subscription service Napster Inc. (NAPS) has announced the launch of an online store that will sell 6 million downloadable songs in the DRM-free MP3 format. For the first time Napster will offer a product playable on iPods and iPhones, as well as various other devices, priced competitively with Amazon.com Inc.'s (AMZN) downloads, which are also DRM-free. The Napster tool will also work with Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) iTunes store, which continues to sell some song files that are only compatible with a certain number of devices.
Napster's bread and butter remains its subscription service, in which users gain access to a large library of music for a basic monthly fee, starting at about $13 a month. The recurring-revenue model is relatively novel for the music business, but it hasn't proven popular enough to bring Napster remotely close to profitability--it lost $36.8 million on sales of $111 million in 2007, and its share price also has taken a beating.
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