Old Skool vs New Skool – Napster’s Spotify competitor goes mobile in the UK

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by Steve O'Hear

on May 19, 2011

Music streaming services are are becoming a dime a dozen, and that’s before we factor in the expected launch of Apple’s own cloud music offering. Today, Best Buy-owned Napster, the Old Skool player of yesteryear (by brand name only) has unleashed its mobile apps here in the UK.

Like Spotify, We7 and a raft of European and U.S. music streaming services, Napster Unlimited plus Mobile, available on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Android devices, gives users on-the-go access to the company’s 15 million track-strong music catalog for a monthly fee of £10. And again similar to Spotify et. al. the apps include off-line playback so that playlists can be cached negating the need for a persistent WiFi or 3G connection.

All very me-too.

In fact, with many services featuring strikingly similar pricing and options, it’s becoming harder to see where competition is making a difference beyond a dash of user experience and perhaps the size of each service’s music catalogue. On that note, Napster make mention of members having access to its “great music discovery features, including playlists, radio stations and recommendations from the Napster music team”. Hardly a deal-clincher is it?

Here’s the full list of ‘features’:

Unlimited mobile streaming over both Wi-Fi and 2.5/3G.
Intuitive and easy to use navigation enabling instant music playback on mobile devices
Mobile access to Napster’s rich feature set including new releases, recommendations, official music charts, Napster’s top 100 charts, and Automix
Offline mobile access to the last 100 played tracks and saved playlists, albums and artists so music is always available even without a mobile connection
Web-based access from any computer, without having to download any software
Automatic synchronisation of playlists on PC, web, mobile and integrated audio devices, with instant and automatic update of changes

Now there is the possibility of something that could make Napster have a slight edge over others: Its parent company is Best Buy and Best Buy Europe is a joint venture with Carphone Warehouse. If Napster mobile subscriptions came bundled with a mobile phone contract through CW in such a way that makes the service ‘feel like free’, we could be onto something. It’s a strategy that Spotify has tried with varying success.

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http://www.backupoutlook.com/ Alice Ward

I don’t know what to feel after reading this (‘coz I’m melodramatic like that,lol). I remember the time when I had to make a report about Napster when I was still a sophomore in college. Now, Napster is making a huge comeback and it seems like it is something to look forward to.

Napster is popular among the people in the 90s and I coming from this generation feels very happy about it being available in the Apple products. Way to go Napster!
dan

does it scrobble?
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As a user of Spotify and Napster at various times I went back to Napster for the music discovery – it is worth having. Napster is also slightly cheaper, a lot more reliable and has a much larger catalogue (in my hands on experience).