Napster, Woken Up From Their Slumber?

In the US Napster have just announced that they are re-launching their music service (again).

They shot to fame all those years ago for their P2P offering which allowed the public to share music files, and which went a long way to beginning the online piracy issues that all the lawyers and technology in Christendom still can't seem to get their heads around.

In 2007 they decided to re-launch, this time legally, offering music subscriptions for streaming and download of the library. One of the problems though was the fact that you really only rented the music and if you cancelled the subscription it was goodbye tunes.

Now, in 2009, they are going to offer a $5 model which allows unlimited streaming and 5 downloads per month which are DRM free... Opinion seems divided in the Blogoshpere.

My feeling it it's an interesting idea, but I can't see it working... you can buy 5 tracks on iTunes for the same money, without a requirement to subscribe, and i'm pretty sure you can stream as much music as you like for free on the likes of Spotify and Last.fm...

I'm not one to shoot it down before they try, but it seems they are going to need to offer consumers a lot more to capture their attention... although i'm sure there's some who will think it's a good deal.

The full press release and a positive take can be found on EndGadget