Napster is dead, long live Napster

Okay, more interesting developments on the digital music front. A while back, CD-burning software maker bought up what was left of Napster at bargain basement prices. There was some vague notion that they'd try to revive the former file-sharing powerhouse, but calling it vague was probably being generous. Well, they seem to have come up with a plan. First, they hired Shawn Fanning, the "brains" behind Napster, and now they're buying pressplay, the online music company formed by Sony and Universal.

Unfortunately for Roxio, this qualifies as simply "interesting" and not "revolutionary" or "market-changing." Sure, there's a potential upside to this, a chance to combine the licensed music of pressplay with the file-sharing and brand recognition of Napster, but there are nagging questions that need to be answered first. Most pressing, of course, is whether or not anyone still cares about Napster. Does the brand recognition mean anything, given the huge expanse of Internet time since it's demise? Second, is there any way to reconcile the open file-sharing of Napster with the highly restricted streaming and downloading of pressplay? It's hard to imagine that the two delivery systems can live together effectively, but "hard to imagine" does not necessarily equal "impossible." Third, is it too late? Obviously, Apple is getting tons of good press right now, and may be defining the terms by which legitimate online music services will work, and it doesn't seem to include file-sharing.

Of course, this leaves another option, which is just fixing pressplay to mimic Apple's service more closely, and throw the Napster name on it. I've long believed that third parties (i.e., companies outside of the major labels), are the best hope for successful online music services, and with Roxio holding a big chunk of the CD-burning market, tight integration with their existing software might give them a compelling reason to exist alongside Apple's eventual Windows offering.

Elsewhere, EMusic added the Beggars Group of labels to their service, which includes 4AD and subsequently, the entire Pixies catalog. I'm still very interested to see what they can do in a post iTunes world.