napster

In recent weeks I have noticed Girl Talk's Feed the Animals at a number of download stores. His albums may or may not violate copyright law, depending on who you ask, and availability has been an issue. I don't recall seeing such good sales from an album with such dubious legal standing.

Ipsos’ TEMPO Digital Music Brandscape study shows improvements in brands have been made by iTunes, Rhapsody and Amazon.com while Napster, MySpace, Wal-Mart and Yahoo have experienced brand erosion over the last year (press release).

• Metallica's Death Magnetic held on to the top spot on the album chart last week, but overall US album sales dropped to 6.92 million units. That's 16.5% lower than the same week in 2007 and one of the lower weeks in 2008. (Billboard.biz)

In a post about Apple's anti-DRM stance, BusinessWeek.com's Peter Burrows mentioned a test being run by one of the major labels. The test is comparing the sales of a number of download stores and looking for evidence of DRM's impact on sales.

It was announced this morning that retail giant Best Buy will buy Napster for $121 million. Given Napster's $67 million in cash and short term investments, the net price of the acquisition is $54 million. Best Buy will offer $2.65 per share, a 94.8% premium over Friday's close.

A day ahead of an Apple announcement (some think a subscription service is on its way), news about updates to Microsoft's Zune are appearing online.

• Nokia has reportedly set in motion its Comes With Music service without finalizing deals with music publishers. (Music Week)

• British retailer HMV reported improved revenues in its most recent quarter. Music sales were down 7% as the company increased its emphasis on video games. (Bloomberg)

In the early part of the decade, many people thought Metallica was doomed. But Metallica's activism against the original Napster has not harmed its career. Its decision to keep its songs off iTunes for many years has not harmed its career.

Napster has once again hired UBS to seek out a buyer for the troubled company.