AOL and Napster announced Friday that Napster will become the exclusive music subscription provider for AOL Music. The two companies will partner to migrate approximately 350,000 paid subscribers of the Music Now service to Napster’s digital music subscription service.
Music Now customers existing personal music libraries will be recreated by Napster. The pricing tiers for subscribers will remain the same as they were under Music Now. The transition will take around 60 days and current subscribers can choose to opt out.
“We are pleased to provide our subscribers the opportunity to seamlessly transition to Napster, which will become the only music subscription service integrated into AOL Music,” said Mike Rich, Vice President, AOL Entertainment. “Music Now subscribers can look forward to enjoying a world-class music experience from Napster.”
Last year Napster subscribers downloaded 500 million songs and over 700 million music streams and currently have over 500,000 subscribers worldwide. There is speculation that this latest deal will improve their chances of being acquired.
“Napster’s new relationship with AOL provides us with an excellent opportunity to aggressively grow subscribers through deep integration with one of the most visited music destinations on the Web,” said Chris Gorog, Napster’s chairman and CEO. “This transaction firmly positions Napster to be the unequivocal global leader in the premium music subscription sector and the number two overall in digital music revenue. We greatly look forward to serving all of the current AOL Music Now subscribers by providing them with the best possible unlimited music experience from Napster.”
What Napster does next whether they continue to look for new partners or are able to find an appealing buyer will be the things to watch for.
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Mike is a staff writer for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest ebusiness news.
