Napster Goes Wireless

Napster Goes Wireless

August 1, 2005

Soon to come to your hand held music downloads from Napster.com. Napster is teaming up with Ericsson to offer a new service that would allow users to download music to their cell phones as well as having the download e-mailed to the user's PCs. "We're targeting markets that have both PCs and the mobile solution for the capabilities of dual delivery," said president of Napster, Brad Duea.

It is expected that this new service will explode in Europe, Japan and Korea, where cell phones frequently operate on 3G networks with connections to the Internet, and will hit the North America and Latin America soon after. It is expected to hit the United States by next year.

The main set back now for Napster is the lack of cell phones that are capable of receiving and playing digital music. Duea stated that although 700 million cell phones will be sold this year, only 10% of them are capable of music downloading and playing. He added that some music capable phones are available through Audiovox.

Specific pricing for the service from Napster has not been established but it will offer options to download the music to the users PC and cell phone. "Our prices will be competitive," Duea says. For Napster's current service, they charge $14.95 a month for access to their music library and $.99 a download.

Verizon Wireless has announced that they too are in the works to offer a similar music service.

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