AT&T to offer Napster mobile music downloads

AT&T is making Napster’s entire music library of over five million songs available for wireless over-the-air download starting early next month.

This represents an important shift in AT&T's stance on over-the-air mobile music downloads versus sideloading music (such as using the iPhone). Speaking of the iPhone, Napster will not work with Apple's uber-phone which is tied to iTunes.

Songs will still be ridiculously expensive - costing $1.99 each - or $7.49 for five songs per month. Unfortunately, until mobile carriers begin to competitively price individual tracks with other digital music providers (i.e., $0.99/song), sideloading will continue to dominate mobile audio. There just isn't a significant enough value proposition to spend twice as much to buy songs over-the-air (note, I'm talking about downloading and not streaming).

When you download a song directly to your phone, you'll automatically get an e-mail message which lets you put a second copy on your computer. Customers who already have songs through Napster will be able to transfer them to their phones as well.

AT&T plans to roll out several new phones next month that will include the Napster service.
The company also will focus more on exclusivity, making more music available only from AT&T through direct deals with artists.

Napster recently introduced a web-based service replacing the separate client download. Napster songs are still - unfortunately - laden with DRM restrictions. AT&T earlier this year partnered with eMusic, which caters more to the indie scene and offers its songs free of any DRM. And in fact the industry in general is moving more towards DRM-free waters. While the additional access to AT&T customers is always a benefit, Napster needs to competitively price their per-song downloads, and drop the DRM, if they want to stay ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, Napster has been playing a game of "me-too" rather than innovating in the space.

For now, it's just another option in an increasingly competitive digital download market.

[New York Times via Switched]