Napster Tells Customers Things Will “Eventually” Be OK At Rhapsody
We knew about the sale days ago, but Napster customers have just learned that they are now sending payments to Rhaps ody. Unfortunately, the transition may not be smooth for everyone. In an overnight email to customers, Napster said that:
"Your account along with your library and playlists will eventually move over to Rhapsody. You don’t have to do anything now…. We will contact you over the coming weeks…"
Then, of course, there are also licensing and matching issues:
"In some cases, there may be a song here or there that we can’t match because of different licensing or rights issues. In these cases, we will try to identify any discrepancies in catalog and acquire the necessary rights."
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Well, the licensing difference is a big deal, but what is just as important to Napster customers is the sticker shock of suddenly becoming a Rhapsody subscriber. It is simply very expensive, whereas Napster had some great deals if you committed to longer than a month.
Compare: Rhapsody with one mobile device: $9.99/mon. or $14.99/mon. on up to 3 devices. NO cheaper web option.
Napster has a web only deal of $4.99/month or $50 for the year. Then for mobile, it was $9.99/mon or $96/year (which comes to $8/mon.) I am a little unsure as to how many devices that included, but I can tell you it worked on my iPod Touch plus the iPad, so at least two. Oh, and what none of you have reported is that Napster just released their iPad app, second only to Rdio (I checked: MOG, Rhapsody and Spotify still don’t have iPad apps). I guess Best Buy just did poor P.R. because Napster was a unique product on price, which actually matters. See: Amazon Kindle Fire.