Napster (NAPS) on Napster-to-Go (quotes from the conf call)

Napster-to-Go is Napster's (ticker: NAPS) subscription MP3 service. Users pay a monthly flat fee, and can then download and listen to as many songs as they want to, and are able to transfer the songs to compatible portable MP3 players. Here's what Napster said about it on its Q4 conference call:

While Napster received great reviews … there was still something missing… The ability to move an unlimited amount of songs from the world's largest catalog to compatible mp3 players for one, low monthly fee. Our subscribers and every focus group we ever tested told us this is what they were waiting for.

…we started a very broad online campaign… across many of the most popular websites, inviting consumers to do the math and comparing filling an iPod with 10,000 songs for $10,000 from iTunes or filling and refilling an MP3 player with unlimited amounts of music for $14.95 per month with Napster-to-Go.

…we have pre-negotiated  costs we take off the top and we split the balance with the labels… obviously, that's divisible by the actual songs played by every individual customer. The electronic counting is very sophisticated and is one of the hurdles some of our competitors have as they try to enter this business. That electronic infrastructure all has to be replicated.

(Quotes from the CCBN StreetEvents transcript.)