Napster Will Sell Mp3s Starting Today
The company is trying to catch up on the market being the only one that doesn’t make available the unrestricted file format, Yahoo News reports.
Although for quite a period of time major record labels rejected the idea of licensing their music for downloading in MP3 format, due to considerable annual drops in CD sales and the ever increasing dominance of Apple Inc.'s iPod music players and its iTunes Music Store, the labels were forced to change their minds in order to be still part of the game.
Amazon.com is singular in that no other retailer provides MP3 downloads from all the major record labels.
Chris Gorog (right), Napster's chairman and chief executive commented on the new market strategy -"It's great that we have finally gotten here". […] "It is really the beginning of a level playing field, which I think is essential for Napster, but also for the health of the digital music business in general."
Apparently, for the success of their new initiative Gorog relies on company having the largest catalog of music licensed for downloads.
Last year MP3 versions of recordings from artists on EMI Group PLC labels became available through ITunes, but the songs cost more, having, however, better quality than standard copy-protected versions.
Tracks downloaded as part of Napster's subscription service will maintain their copyright limitations.
Napster said that the price per track will be 99 cents and full-album downloads will cost $9.95.
