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Napster says its improving revenue

5 January 2007 7:10 by Dave "Davedough" Horvath

Once touted as the most popular music sharing community, only to be thwarted by the likes of Metallica and the RIAA, Napster has faced many hardships in its lifespan. Since going "legit" and competing against the likes of Apple's iTunes, their meager market share in the digital music distribution business had many wondering if Napster was even still around.

Recent sales figures have shown that 2006 was a pretty good year due to a change in marketing strategy and hiring of an investment bank, UBS. Revenue figures show Napster brought in some $28 million thanks to its increase in subscribers by 48,000, bringing its total subscriber base to 566,000. Early analysts had only predicted Napster to bring in $27 million due to a 0.5% decrease in Napster shares during trading.

Napster's biggest struggle these days is going up against 80% market share holder, Apple. Napsters service is not compatible with the iPod in the same way as iTunes, so they've yet to come up with an interesting enough strategy to bribe iTunes enthusiasts over to their eager servers. Napster subscribers downloaded some 500 million songs during 2006; a stark comparison to iTunes 1.8 billion songs sold since its 2001 launch. There still are ripple effects that remain to be seen with Microsoft entering the foray with its own Zune product.

Source:
Reuters

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