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June 27 - July 4, 2004 |
Napster finally launches in Canada
But most-used internet retailer iTunes Music Store still unavailable in this country
By Alessandro Cancian
Originally Published: 2004-06-06
Almost one year after relaunching Napster, Roxio Inc. announced last week that its online music service division has finally launched in Canada. Actually, Napster is far from a latecomer. Until recently, those Canadians who wanted to download a song from the Internet legally could only visit the Puretracks site (www.puretracks.com). Canada, in fact, is still cut off from what is today's most used system, iTunes Music Store, which holds a 70 percent share of the sales of digital music through its 700,000-song repository.
The arrival of Napster brings some fresh air on a market that, for various reasons, was left behind. In its first months, Puretracks, despite a very limited catalogue, managed to sell over one million songs. They may be few, in comparison to iTunes' 2.7 million per week, but enough to confirm that users are interested.
Roxio's entry on the Canadian market represents the second major international expansion of the service, which recently debuted in the UK. Napster said it will offer its music subscription service and an Internet music store at www.napster.ca.
The Canadian version of Napster will feature more than 300,000 tracks from the five major record labels - BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Canada and Warner Music Canada, as well as a number of independent labels.
As part of the launch, it is offering a free seven-day trial of service. As for the other markets, Roxio will offer 2 versions of the service: Napster Light and Napster.
Napster 2.0 is available only to users of Windows operating systems and like its American and British counterparts, Napster's Canadian service is available in a "Light" version that allows users to preview and download music - it's priced at CDN$1.19 per track or $9.95 per album. The full Napster service also allows users to listen to music on demand for an additional $9.95 per month fee. In comparison, Puretracks is offering songs at C$0.99 each.
Napster subscribers can listen to and collect full-length, high-quality tracks online and offline. Listen online at home or at work to an unlimited amount of tracks on-demand from the Napster music catalogue as long as you are a Napster subscriber. If you do not renew your subscription songs will no longer play. You can also buy and collect as many tracks as you want on the hard drives and share the songs on up to 3 PC computers.
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