Napster to Launch Pre-Paid Music Cards In Over 14,000 Retail Stores for the Holidays
Cards Will Make Music from Napster
Available Without Credit Cards By Mid-November
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Just 48 hours before its
highly-anticipated nationwide launch, Napster(R), a division of Roxio
(Nasdaq: ROXI), announced 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.
Featuring the familiar Napster kittyhead logo, the plastic card closely
resembles a credit card. A scratch-off surface conceals a PIN that recipients
use to activate 15 credits for permanent downloads from the Napster service.
As always, music lovers are welcome to enjoy many other Napster features
free-of-charge, including: 30-second music clips, on-demand music videos,
decades of interactive Billboard charts, community features, and the online
music magazine Fuzz.
With this program Napster is capitalizing on the burgeoning pre-paid card
market recently embraced by other leading retail brands including McDonald's
and Starbucks. Retail distribution innovator InComm, a leader in prepaid and
stored value products, is partnering with Napster on what will be the first
mass-distributed music download card ever created. The U.S. stored-value card
market is expected to be worth $290 billion by 2006, according to Financial
Insights.
Napster 2.0 will significantly raise the bar for online music. It enables
fans to freely sample the world's largest and most diverse online collection
of music, featuring over half a million tracks. The revolutionary easy-to-use
interface allows users to quickly and easily download tracks, transfer songs
to portable devices or burn them to CDs for just 99 cents per track or $9.95
per album. In addition to the free online magazine, Billboard charts, music
videos, song clips and the ability to email tracks to friends and browse other
members' collections, serious music fans have the added option to upgrade to a
premium service that offers unlimited listening and downloading, over 40
commercial-free radio stations and a collection of interactive play lists and
community features, all for just $9.95 a month.
The Napster Card is the third Napster product on retail shelves
nationwide. Last month, Microsoft announced that Napster would be the
featured music service on Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004,
enabling music fans to experience Napster 2.0 from the comfort of their couch
using a TV and a remote control. Earlier this month, Napster unveiled the
Samsung Napster player, which is available for purchase in leading electronics
stores nationwide. The first in a family of portable music devices to come
from Napster's partnership with consumer electronics leader Samsung, the
player allows consumers to take their digital music library with them.
Napster 2.0 also supports almost all of the top selling digital audio devices
sold in the marketplace today.
About Napster
Napster(R) is the world's most recognized brand in online music. Napster
has content agreements with the five major record labels, as well as hundreds
of independents. Napster delivers access to the largest catalog of online
music with more than 500,000 tracks spanning all genres and artists from
Eminem to Miles Davis. Napster is a division of Roxio, Inc., (Nasdaq: ROXI),
the Digital Media Company, provider of the best-selling digital media software
in the world. Napster has offices in Los Angeles and New York.
Safe Harbor Statement
Except for historical information, the matters discussed in this press
release, in particular matters related to the launch of the Napster service,
net income (loss), relationships with certain corporate partners including
marketing partners and hardware and software manufacturers, relationships with
content providers, and product development, are forward-looking statements
that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties such as decreased demand
for our products, increased competition, failure to develop new products or
improvements to existing products, failure to maintain business relationships
with our partners and general economic conditions, that could cause actual
results to differ materially from those projected. Additional information on
these and other factors are contained in Roxio's reports filed with the
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the Company's Quarterly
Report on Form 10-Q as filed with the SEC on August 14, 2003, copies of which
are available at the website maintained by the SEC at http://www.sec.gov .
Roxio assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements included
in this press release.
Copyright(C) 2003 Roxio, Inc. All rights reserved. Roxio and Napster are
either trademarks or registered trademarks of Roxio, Inc. or its subsidiaries
in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks used are
owned by their respective owners.
For further information, please contact Seth Oster of Napster,
+1-310-281-5027, seth.oster@napster.com , or Lauren Karp of Roxio, Inc.,
+1-408-367-4866, lauren.karp@roxio.com
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