Digital Home Thoughts: Napster Markets Paid Service with Free Listens

"Napster unveiled a free ad-supported version of its online music service that allows users to listen to any song in its library as many as five times. The move is designed to steer listeners to Napster's fee-based services once they have reached their five-play limit. Napster's announcement marks the latest incarnation of the popular music site, which endured legal challenges from record labels over Napster file-swapping software that allowed people to share and copy each other's music without purchasing it. "



Unfortunately after having the ultimate "free" service, anything else offered up under the Napster name just seems to fall short. This service seems OK for browsing, but why don't they come up with a better free service. I'm thinking of something like customize radio. You choose from their complete library to make your perfect rotation and they stream it to you with the insertion of commercials. Even better would be to download an entire stream (maybe a few hours worth) and use the DRM so that you can't fast forward through the commercials. Basically, make it just like radio except you get to pick exactly what you want to hear. Seems that if implemented properly, the broadcast radio business model could be successful in this realm.