The Napster Blog

Napster Beta - Player and Navigation Enhancements

We wanted to give you a heads-up on some recently released changes to the Napster Beta. Many of you told us that you want the ability to add all the songs in your queue to a playlist—we listened and now have that functionality available! Also, we've added player status notifications when adding albums and songs to your queue and when deleting songs from a playlist. We've also tweaked some navigational elements in the header at the top of the page to make it easier for you to get around the site. These changes include menu drop-downs on hover-over with your mouse and clearer links to learn more about the Beta.

We are excited to have the Napster Blog integrated into the Beta. The Napster Blog has a ton of rich content about new releases, album reviews and other events in the world of music. Each piece is delivered by our staff of professional writers daily. Today, you can read about Michael Jackson, Taylor Swift and the American Music Awards or learn about music inspired by the Berlin Wall on the 20th anniversary of its fall.

That's it for now! More news on the new Napster Beta will be out soon...

-Bill Coats

Sr. Product Manager

Napster Twitter Lists: Miss Out on Music No More

Missing quality music in the mess of Twitter life? Now available at an Internet near you—Napster's Twitter lists for musical genres. Napster is quickly establishing itself as the all-genre one-stop shop to find the best Twitter music lists to follow. Whether it's the most relevant hip-hop artists, hardest alternative rockers, or the electronic DJs and producers packing dance floors worldwide, Napster has genre-specific lists stacked with the artists that fans want to hear from. Napster's 20 lists (so far) also include genres outside the mainstream's gaze, like classical, Christian and even children's music.

Unclear the clutter of your Twitter feed by following music lists hand-picked for the artists you care about. Since Twitter released its list feature earlier this month, listing has trumped following as the most important number in the twitterverse. With an abundance of lists jamming the social-media mecca, finding the best lists has quickly become a shortcut to getting refined, specific information to suit anyone's specific fancy. And after all, what is more important than music?

Find your way over to Napster's Twitter Lists and get connected with the most active and important artists on Twitter in your favorite genre. Miss out no more!

New Version of Napster Beta Released

The Napster Team sends a shout-out to the thousands of Napster members and visitors who have taken a look at the new Napster beta and provided feedback! We hope you are enjoying browsing around and using some of the new features, like our embedded player and auto-complete search. We're actively reading through your comments and will do our best to prioritize and take action on this valuable feedback.

I wanted to also let our users know we released the latest version of the new Napster beta today. A lot of the work we’ve done has been focused on building out the core functionality of the site. While many of these improvements are not visually noticeable because they are "behind the scenes," they will improve the overall experience. Among the improvements:

• Improved presentation of our embedded player and queue display
• Enhanced site performance by optimizing page and content load times
• Many minor bug fixes

By the way, if you haven’t already tried our new full-screen album browser—you should! To see it for yourself, just visit any artist page, browse to the albums tab and click on the button with the four arrows on the right side of the Napster window. It looks like this:

Follow this link to Michael Jackson’s album page and click the full-screen button if you’d like to try it out now.

We're planning more releases in the near future, and our team will be sure to let you know immediately each time we make them available. In the meantime, I encourage all of our beta visitors to take our full survey, which will help the team learn more about your preferences and make the new Napster experience even better.

—Bill Coats, Sr. Product Manager

Get a Free Year of Napster with Select Dell Computers

Are you one of the many people who like listening to music on your PC at work or using your PC to stream music at home? Have you been putting off getting a new PC—or thinking about getting one as a gift for someone? Well, wait no longer, because Dell has a great offer with Napster through the holidays.

Purchase select Dell desktop and laptop computers and get a free year of unlimited on-demand streaming music from Napster, plus 60 MP3 song credits to download music of your choice from Napster's catalog of over 8 million songs.

This great offer is available through Best Buy or direct from Dell only through the holiday season, so hop to it.

Introducing the New Napster—Now Open for Beta Testing!

We're very happy to be able to share an exciting new development with you: For some time now, we've been working on a whole new design for Napster based on suggestions from our members. The goal is to make finding, playing, and buying music easier and more fun. We like it a lot and hope you'll agree.

We're still testing and tweaking at this point, but we've opened up the beta version now in order to get as much additional feedback as possible. Your comments will help us make the new design even better, so if you're curious, please give the new Napster beta a try and send us your thoughts. If you're a Napster member, you can sign in with your existing member name and password.

Here are a couple of major areas we've been working on:

Search
We've heard that you want to find artists, albums, and songs as fast as possible. Napster’s improved search now includes auto-suggest results that appear as you type. When you see what you're looking for, one click takes you there. You can even play an Automix directly from the results.

Player
The new Napster has an embedded player that stays front-and-center no matter where you click on the site. When you add music to the player, the new pop-up player queue makes it all easier to see and manage. Drag and drop songs, make playlists,and even buy music right from the queue.

Again, once you've taken the new Napster beta for a spin, please send us feedback. Let us know what you think so we can make Napster the best it can be.

We'll be posting more about the new Napster beta in this space as we work to make improvements, so check back often. And we're looking forward to hearing from you, too. Thanks in advance for helping us build the best music experience online.

Napster: Over 9 Million Tracks and Counting

2009 has been another year of catalog growth for Napster. Since January, we have increased the number of available tracks to over 9 million. Yes, it's true: Our global catalog is now over 9 million tracks and still growing!

We've added some great independent labels like Warp Records, Touch & Go,  News NV,  Republic of Music, Pure Mint Recordings and Zojak. Additionally, we continue to grow our international repertoire, and this year we've added labels like MGM Distribution in the United Kingdom.

Of the 9 million-plus tracks now available through Napster, over 8 million are currently available as full-length streaming tracks for our subscribers (the rest are available for purchase and can be streamed as 30-second samples). As our catalog grows, we continue to work hard with publishers and content providers such as Cash Money Records (Lil Wayne, Juvenile)  and Victory Records (Hawthorne Heights, Otep) to make sure as many songs as possible are available for our members to enjoy via both streaming and MP3 download.

Thanks for the continued support—as strong as the past months have been, 2009 has already been another year of quality growth, and we aren’t done yet!

NAPSTER NAMED 2009 WEBWARE 100 AWARDS FINALIST

We're excited to announce Napster was named today as a finalist, in the Audio & Music category, in the 2009 Webware 100 Awards by the editors at Webware.com (a CNET site). The Webware 100 honors the people's choice for the best Web 2.0 apps and services, and the winners are determined by public vote.

The final 100 winners (10 in each category) will be announced May 19.

Vote for Napster today, and vote often! We can't do it without you.

Logitech Squeezebox Adds Music from Napster

Napster has become the latest service available on Logitech Squeezebox devices. Using your existing wireless home network and your Squeezebox player, now you can access Napster’s library in your living room, bedroom, or in any room where you listen to music.

Napster is available for a free 30-day trial to Squeezebox owners in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and Germany. Or if you're already a Napster subscriber, you can start listening to Napster on your Squeezebox anywhere in your home for no additional charge.

The Napster service is available now and will work with every Squeezebox product ever shipped (going all the way back to the first SLIMP3)! How’s that for lasting value?

For more information, click here. Or find the latest Squeezebox devices here.

Did someone say over 7 million tracks on Napster?

As Sr. Director of Content Operations, you won’t see me blog often, but since we've had such an amazing year of quality catalog growth, I couldn't help but want to share.

When I say 2008 has been a significant growth year for music in Napster, I mean this: Since January, we have increased the number of tracks by 75% worldwide. Yes, it's true, our global catalog is now well over 7 million tracks and still growing!

We have added some great independent labels like Merge Records, Utensil Records, Houseplanet, Dischord, Zojak, Little Idiot and Kobalt. Additionally, we continue to grow the international repertoire, and this year we've added labels like Kiver (Italy), Feria (South America), ISA (Scotland) and 7 Digital (United Kingdom).

As our catalog grows, we continue to work hard with providers and publishers to make sure that songs are available for members to enjoy, whether by streaming, transferring to a device, or purchasing MP3s.   Thanks for the continued support—as strong as the past 12 months have been, 2009 is already shaping up to be another year of quality growth.

Sonos Napster Sweepstakes

Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to access your Napster library and listen to it in every room of your house? You could listen to your '80s playlist on the patio, your favorite country album in the kitchen, and Barry White in the bedroom – and you wouldn't even need a computer. You'd manage it all from a single hand-held wireless controller.

Well, that dream could soon be your reality. Sonos, maker of high-end audio solutions, has partnered with Napster for a sweepstakes where you could win a free Sonos Multi-Room Music System. This system usually retails for close to $1000, so this is a pretty sweet prize. Not only does it allow you to control music in multiple rooms independently, it is fully integrated with Napster, meaning you can sign in, search, and play music from Napster right from the Sonos controller.

To enter the Sonos Napster Sweepstakes, click here. Don’t wait too long – the deadline for entries is Dec. 31. By the way, using Napster with Sonos is really easy. To learn more, visit the Napster page on the Sonos site. And be sure to enter the sweepstakes, because someone has to win. Good luck!