Napster, Circuit City partner for new music store
updated 03:55 pm EDT, Fri April 20, 2007
Napster/Circuit City store
Napster and Circuit City have formed a partnership to start a new music subscription service, Reuters reports. The service launches April 29th, and will cost $15 per month, or 99 cents for individual tracks. The move continues Napster's efforts to acquire more subscribers, the most notable being its absorption of 350,000 customers from AOL's defunct Music Now store. Circuit City was in fact the original creator of Music Now, having sold it to AOL in 2005.
The partnership also reflects increasing attempts by electronics stores to compete with the likes of iTunes, which holds over 80 percent of digital music sales, and represents a direct threat to any outlet with a large music section. In October of last year, Best Buy formed a store in tandem with with SanDisk and RealNetworks.
