Napster hacks down its streaming subscription price

by Stevie Smith - May 19 2009, 15:00

Looking to strengthen its market position alongside Apple’s hugely popular iTunes music store, rival online provider Napster has dramatically reduced the price of its music streaming service, bringing it down from $12.95 USD per month to just $5 USD.

Beyond hacking down its subscription price by more than 60 percent while maintaining unlimited access to its streaming service, Napster has thrown prospective users a little more incentive by also including five full song downloads per month for customers picking up on its offer. 

“For five bucks now you can have access to our entire music catalog and get five MP3s to add to your permanent collection,” enthused Napster CEO Chris Gorog regarding the reduction. “It’s a killer offer we believe stands up nicely across any competitive lens you put it through.”

However, while $5 USD per month and five free downloads is indeed an affordable and attractive point of temptation when considering Napster’s collection of seven million songs, it remains to be seen if it impacts Apple’s dominance or lures traffic from completely free streaming services such as Last.fm or Spotify.

Napster.com was acquired in the fourth quarter of 2008 by American retail behemoth Best Buy, which has said it will work to provide exposure for the new Napster offer via an in-store marketing campaign.

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