Napster Goes Entirely Web-Based

In a bid to reach more consumers at a time at which the Internet application appears more and more capable of managing tasks ordinarily best performed by desktop-based utilities, Napster plans to abandon its current distribution model for one entirely Web-based. The move will allow both active and any future Napster users to play music obtained through the service - which will continue to operate via a subscription system - from any computer with a broadband connection and open access to the Internet.

The company expects to bring more consumers to its new platform via the immense gateways that are today’s various social networks, among other Web 2.0-specific websites (and their respective APIs).

Much of today’s youth resides on such networks. For Napster to tap those populations for new users makes a great deal of sense for the company going forward. And though I hesitate to consider the music subscription model as having any long-lived future, there could very well be a life for Napster using the very same system it’s employed for a number of years now - so far fairly unsuccessfully, I should add.

While I see iTunes as the “marvel” that it is because of its basic structure as a place to purchase music outright, Napster (as well as numerous other such businesses), with some intelligent marketing on the social networking front, could certainly grow to become a viable competitor to the industry leader. That is, if all things go as planned. And, well, when does that ever occur?

While I personally wish to avoid a subscription service – I choose my own musical collection album by album – others do indeed find it appealing, and if today’s teenagers and young adults find music to be consumed inexpensively, or in some cases even freely, there’s likely room in their lives for an all-access pass of the Napster vein that enables them the choice to listen to any one of millions of tracks on demand and transfer favorites to a compatible portable music player with great ease – and cheaply.

And if they can recommend and share music easily with friends on, say, MySpace or Facebook or whathaveyou, that’s one extra selling point that Napster could have for the millions upon millions of users on said networks.

The more I think about it, the more I find this latest move by Napster to a Web-only existence to be a very smart one indeed.