Source

Best Buy has decided that the Napster music service is too top heavy and eliminated the music service's CEO and president positions, a company spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Chris Gorog announced that he was leaving as CEO, a move that comes some 15 months after the Web music service was acquired by retail chain Best Buy on the company's blog. Brad Duea, Napster's president, is also leaving the company, the spokeswoman said. She said that Best Buy wanted to "streamline Napster's executive structure."

Christopher Allen, Napster's chief operating officer, will run the site and has been named Napster's general manager. "We began with a simple idea--legalizing Napster," Gorog wrote, "and spent almost a decade trying to perfect that dream."

What a failure.

Hmmm I wonder if my Napster T shirts are a collectors item now.

The "spent almost a decade" is ridiculous. iTunes has it down pat. Charge per song, and leave it at that. I think Rhapsody works that way too. Napster has a monthly fee. That's ridiculous, because if people aren't going to buy something for a month, why pay for something you're not using? It's a constant bleeding of the customer's wallet, one little slice at a time. As much as I like Apple, there's no way I'd pay into a monthly service for them, or anyone for that matter.

Also, whether people admit it or not, "Napster" will always be a word that has a negative connotation to it. It used to be cool, but now it's got a black mark on the branding that will forever be there. Hell, I still think of Metallica when I hear the word "Napster", and all of Lars' nonsense. It's unfriendly in people's subconscious.

Rhapsody should buy it, put the two together, and enlarge their service. It seems to me that their closest competitor is iTunes, so why not give Apple a run for their money? Fair and healthy competition is healthy for the economy.

Napster is just bleeding to death, obviously.

Illegal Napster offered music wise, everything but kitchen sink and their search engine to find songs was amazing. If you could some up with just part of the lyrics you could find most songs. The record companies should've allowed them to keep that basic formula and charge per song. Maybe they wouldn't be trippin' about the strangle hold Mr. Jobs/Apple have over music/digital downloads.... though I don't feel sorry for the dumb asses.

ernestsewell said:

I used to love these Camp Chaos videos...

squirrelgrease said:

I remember that video. It was spot on 110% perfect.