Napster is back offers pre-paid music cards in retail stores

Napster, a division of Roxio, is about to make it's comeback. An article at Music Industry News  states that millions of pre-paid cards for the popular digital music service will be available for sale in nearly 14,000 retail outlets by mid-November. The Napster Card will offer 15 downloads for $ 14.85, allowing music fans '“ for the first time '“ to easily give the gift of digital music through a gift card and bypass the need for credit cards to permanently download music.

"The pre-paid card initiative is critical because it eliminates a significant barrier to the legitimate digital music market: How to involve teens and millions of other Americans who don't have credit cards," said Napster President Mike Bebel. "With the Napster Card, you can give the gift of music without worrying about picking the right band or the right album. It's just the kind of gift we're all looking for this time of year. This will instantly get the Napster brand into thousands of top retailers across the country in time for the holiday season." As Napster 2.0 goes live to America on Wednesday, the Napster Card program will greatly extend the accessibility and visibility of Napster 2.0. The Napster Card will be available for purchase at national and regional retailers including: Best Buy, CompUSA, Kroger, Safeway, RiteAid, ExxonMobil, Duane Reade, Diamond Shamrock and Speedway/SuperAmerica. More retailers will be joining the program shortly.

I have already downloaded the Napster software and registered. This is a very simple, fast and straightforward process. Although they say the software hasn't changed, it certainly has changed since the last time I used it, which was prior to the availability of Kazaa Lite. This is some nice looking software! Powerful and extremely easy to use. You can browse by genre (20 catagories) such as rock, then select a sub catagory (21 catagories) for instance Top artists. This resulted in a list of about 250 complete albums from .38 special to ZZ top in about 10 seconds. It includes album art and a review/Bio with a list of what other members who bought this liked. The ability to listen to 30 seconds of the tracks you are interested in is included. Roxio provides the burning engine of course. I purchased Fleetwood Mac's "Dust" from the Bare Trees album. The 2.8 meg file took about 15 seconds on a cable connection, right click of the track enables a burn dialog etc. All in all an extremely polished look and zero learning curve will make for an awesome addition to the online downloading services.

The ability to purchase a pre-paid card to give to the kids or as gifts to friends is going to be a real bonus. I would think that would really promote an already great service. Welcome back Napster!

Source: mi2n.com