Filed under: Portable Audio

It’s been a long, tumultuous road for Napster, but the music service once loathed by James Alan Hetfield will soon be property of Best Buy. Announced this morning, the retail giant has agreed to buy Napster Inc. for a staggering $121 million, $67 million of which will be cold, hard cash. The deal is set to close in Q4 of this year, and it will include Napster’s “700,000 digital entertainment subscribers, web-based customer-service platform and mobile capabilities.” According to Best Buy president Brian Dunn, it intends to use “Napster’s capabilities and digital subscriber base to reach new customers with an enhanced experience for exploring and selecting music and other digital entertainment products over an increasing array of devices.” We’re still remaining calm for the moment, but if Best Buy starts buying up unprecedented amounts of dark fiber without explanation, we’ll go ahead and assume it really is trying to take over the world.

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Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio

Heads up, MP3 lovers, because Naptser launched its DRM-free music store today. As promised to throngs of fans, the historical pirate network has converted its entire music catalog of an impressive six million songs into MP3s to be sold at $.99 each or $9.95 for albums. Subscribers will remain in DRM land, however, so don’t go getting any crazy ideas.

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Filed under: Portable Audio

They had already been considering it and now it’s official — Napster will be converting its entire downloads catalogue to 100% DRM-free MP3s (innit funny how things come full circle?) in Q2 of this year. With all track and album sales offered exclusively in MP3 format, the company obviously hopes to attract a certain crowd heretofore locked out of its business model. While the subscription service will remain a core focus, Napster execs are surely hoping to see an uptick in their direct download sales when those teeming iPod and iPhone hordes come knocking second quarter.

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

After a month or so of delays, Samsung has finally launched its P2 media player in the States; and it’s not putting the 3-inch touchscreen sporting, flash-based, Bluetooth-enabled DAP out there all by its lonesome. Today Samsung announced MPfreedom, a website with info and customization doohickeys, and of course content partnerships with the likes of CinemaNow, Rhapsody and Napster. As we heard before, Samsung is also going to be supporting the player through “Blue Wave” firmware upgrades, the first of which is due for December, and will include Bluetooth phone call and file transfer integration, along with AAC compatibility — currently only WMA and MP3 are supported — and some other frills. Samsung is emphasizing its 3-inch, 16:9 display that can run video at 30fps (WMV and MPEG-4), and of course the touchscreen “EmoTure” tap ‘n slide interface. The player is available in 2GB, 4GB ($199) and 8GB ($249) capacities, in your choice of black, white or red. There’s 35 hours of music playback or 5 hours of video on the battery, and Samsung tossed in an FM radio for good measure.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Features, Home Entertainment, Wireless

There’s really not much to say about the new simple-as-could-be ZoneBridge BR100, but it’s got a pretty specific function and seems prepared to carry that out. Sonos primarily sees the BR100 as a range extender, specifically solving the problem of some households wasting a ZP80 or ZP100 locked away in a closet with their router due to the requirement of at least one Zone being hard plugged directly into the network. The unit itself is smallish, light and of quality construction — and that’s really all there is to it. As for firmware 2.5, Napster is obviously the primary addition, but we’re pretty partial to the new search function; text input is a chore, but there’s really no better way to locate your own music or track down new tracks on the multiple music services available to the system.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Busy morning for Sonos so let’s just get to it. First, the ZoneBridge BR100 is out and official for $100 just like we expected. It features a pair of Ethernet ports to link your Xbox 360, TiVo, etc. into the Sonos network and onto the nets. It’ll also extend coverage to network dead spots without having to unload $350 for another Zone. The free 2.5 firmware update brings direct, PC-less access to Napster’s new 4.0 Web platform and Best Buy’s Digital Music Store. The update also tweaks features and zone management while adding a new search function which spans both premium services and your home music library. Available now at Sonos which sits just beyond that little read link.

[Via PC Magazine]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Busy morning for Sonos so let’s just get to it. First, the ZoneBridge BR100 is out and official for $100 just like we expected. It features a pair of Ethernet ports to link your Xbox 360, TiVo, etc. into the Sonos network and onto the nets. It’ll also extend coverage to network dead spots without having to unload $350 for another Zone. The free 2.5 firmware update brings direct, PC-less access to Napster’s new 4.0 Web platform and Best Buy’s Digital Music Store. The update also tweaks features and zone management while adding a new search function which spans both premium services and your home music library. Available now at Sonos which sits just beyond that little read link.

[Via PC Magazine]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio

We suppose the third time’s a charm. AT&T and Napster have quite the history of offering up lackluster deals to customers — first with that $14.95 Napster To Go scam on Cingular, then the free Napster To Go on AT&T — but they’re finally doing it up right and offering wireless downloads from Napster’s 5 million strong catalog to AT&T’s music-starved subscribers. Right now your options with the carrier are eMusic for some spendy wireless downloads, or the iPhone. Unfortunately, while Napster bests eMusic on selection, the price remains the same at $7.49 per five songs, and these ain’t no DRM-free affair like eMusic. The Napster service will also allow for $1.99 a la carte purchases, something eMusic lacks, and with every purchase you receive an email on your PC to help you download a copy of the track. Verizon and Sprint have quite the jump on AT&T when it comes to over-the-air music downloads, but we’ll see if AT&T can start to gain some ground starting early next month when the service launches. Oh, and before you ask: no, Napster won’t work on the iPhone.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Portable Audio

According to news out today, Napster is attempting a fevered slide back into the game with a relaunch of its music-download service, featuring a heavier emphasis on web-based streaming capabilities. The new “4.0″ platform the company is touting boasts improved compatibility, as playlists and content and be accessed from any computer, without the use of additional software — though if you want to get that music onto a player, you’re still stuck with Napster’s proprietary application and list of compatible players. In addition to the accessibility revamp, the company says it has further plans to embrace DRM-free music in 2008, which makes sense, as the portal’s music has heretofore been unplayable on Apple’s products — which have the largest market share. Can that rascally cat pick up the pieces? Only time will tell.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Features, Portable Audio

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:

The iPod and iTunes haven’t ostensibly suffered for (and have arguably gained from the) lack of a subscription music service. However, while such services have proven a tough sell to consumers at large, they have their benefits. One is the general liberation from the 30-second sample, a tiny prison of time that makes it difficult to engage in meaningful music discovery, the silver lining in the digital cloud that has been raining on the music industry for so many years.

In contrast to Rhapsody, Napster and Microsof’s Zune Pass, which offer several ways within their software for subscribers to hear full tracks in which they might be interested, Apple has recently turned “out of band” for music discovery. The high-profile announcement with Starbucks at the introduction of Apple’s latest round of iPods brings the portable devices to where the free music is rather than vice versa. Among Apple’s portable music players, the automatic track identification works only with the iPod touch and the iPhone. However, the flat-panel televisions in New York City Starbucks locations also note PCs and Macs as suitable (and prevalent) clients for purchasing music played at the popular coffee retailer.

An encouraging aspect of the collaboration between Starbucks and Apple is that the right company is making the brown product. However, one hot spot of trouble brewing in this Half-n-Half is that one can listen to the music only at a Starbucks location. This begs whether Apple would continue such a partnership when the iPhone finally gets access to 3G (perhaps to the scandalous exclusion of AT&T) or whether it or another device such as the iPod touch embrace WiMAX. But extending access to Starbucks’ percolated playlists need not wait for such wireless advances. The two companies could enable access via a simple option in iTunes that would stream Starbucks’ Hear Music XM station — or an equivalent — via any broadband connection.

Continue reading Switched On: The DAP, the Frap, the pap and the gap

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!