UYRL

As the music industry continues its inevitable trudge towards a largely DRM-free future, there’s likely to be plenty of hat-eating and humble-pie feasting from execs, blogged joyously yet scornfully by the geek press.

Latest on the rack is Sony boss Howard Stringer, who has admitted “if we had gone with open technology from the start, I think we probably would have beaten Apple”. He’s referring to Apple’s success in making the iPod to digital music what the Walkman was to the cassette tape.
Sony spent years forcing users of its digital music devices to contend with the closed, proprietary ATRAC format as opposed to the more popular MP3 format that the iPod has always supported. “We can no longer say that we’re right and our customers are wrong”, says Stringer. “We can”t only build what we want to build.”

And that’s a good thing, because some of what Sony previously wanted to build - particularly the now-defunct Connect store and its compatible software - was so dire that Steve Jobs might wince into his turtleneck.

And now for Napster’s next act…

With its 10-year anniversary around the corner, one-time music ‘biz bad boy Napster announced Monday a new subscription service featuring a $5 per month pricing plan that allows subscribers unlimited, on-demand streaming access to their library of more than 7 million tracks.

The kicker in the new deal is that you get to download and keep five songs per month in DRM-free MP3 format. Not too shabby. Put those tracks right onto the iPod, Zune or whatever. Let’s note that beyond the five freebies, if you want more MP3s, it’ll cost you between 69¢ and $1.29 — same as our friends at iTunes or Amazon.

The updated service also offers more than 60 commercial-free radio stations with more than 1,400 pre-programmed play-lists.

Best Buy SVP of entertainment Julie Owen said:

“A decade ago, Napster revolutionized the way people discovered and enjoyed music. The brand that started it all is shaking things up again with a new service that provides music lovers continued access to the entertainment experience they’ve come to expect of Napster and Best Buy.”

This is the first major re-launch of Napster since mega-retailer Best Buy acquired the service last year; the company plans to sell prepaid cards redeemable for the monthly service in Best Buy stores.

Anyone interested in trying the subscription model can try Napster for free for seven days and then pay $12.95 a month for the subscription plan.

One-time bane of the RIAA, Metallica and let’s just go ahead and say the music industry as a whole (not the music consumers though, we loved it), Napster has had quite a digital decade. Founder Shawn Fanning’s music file sharing service was shuttered in 2001 and brought back to life in 2003 by Roxio as a legit service. To say it caught the recording industry off guard would be a thunderous understatement. Whether or not they’ve recovered remains a good topic – but probably not for music execs.

Not sure yet how the new Napster is going to compare with Rhapsody, iTunes, Zune Marketplace, Pandora, Lala, and other services, but on the surface it appears to be a pretty sweet deal. It’s not a digital music game-changer, but an improvement nonetheless.

However, let’s not forget sites like Pandora, Last.fm and Slacker, for example, are free services, and good a deal as $5 per-month is, it’s still not free.

However again: the five, free MP3s each month is a nice bonus.

The new Napster offering is now available for U.S. residents at www.napster.com

Are you curious to check out Napster’s $5/month unlimited streaming service, or is that still too much to pay for music?