Digital Home Thoughts: Napster Price Cut is Like Getting a Free Subscription

"On the evening of May 18, the online music service Napster (a subsidiary of Best Buy) intends to drop the price of its least-expensive subscription music plan from $12.95 down to $5. The low-cost subscription plan allows users unrestricted streaming from a catalog of over 7 million songs, as well as a new offering of five DRM-free MP3 downloads per month. Although Napster's music service has an international reach, the new subscription plan is currently available only to U.S. customers."

If you can live without taking subscription music with you, Napster has a pretty good deal. For $5 per month you get five MP3 download and have unlimited on-demand streaming. The breakeven calculation is pretty simple: if you normally buy five $0.99 tracks per month, you can basically get unlimited on-demand streaming for a nickel! That's streaming, mind you, which means you can only play on an Internet-connected computer. But if you don't mind that limitation, it's hard to find a downside.

I've been a subscription user for several years, including, at various times, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, and, currently, Zune Marketplace. Even though I still buy tracks to keep permanently, I wouldn't ever want to give up a subscription service because I can try out just about any music I want with no fear of buyer's remorse. And between my wife, two kids, and me we enough musical diversity to easily cover the $15/month cost.