Same old song and dance

According to USA Today, Napster is making a comeback, only this time as a legitimate, legal online music service. You may recall that Roxio, who makes the Easy CD Creator software, bought Napster's assets a while back after multinational conglomerate Bertlesmann finally gave up on the company. Well, they've got big plans for it. Paid subscriptions. Top-tier musical offerings. No problems with copyright. No chance in hell of happening.

Roxio either has an ace up their sleeve or their heads in the sand. Everyone and their life partner have been talking about legit online music services since Centerspan bought Scour a couple of years ago. Remember Scour? I didn't think so. Companies like Listen.com, FullAudio and EMusic have been talking about how they've got the "answer" to illegal file-swapping, only to get tepid responses from the major labels. And one executive who used to work at Universal Studios isn't going to make a whit of difference, especially when you've got the major label anti-Christ, Napster founder Shawn Fanning, working as a consultant.

I'd like to think that Roxio has a plan that is somehow different than all the other upstarts who have tried to get the majors onboard with a user-friendly, reasonably-priced online music service, but I just don't see it happening.