XM Radio and Napster to Join Forces
Reuters reported this morning that a deal between Napster and XM Radio was announced late Tuesday. The two companies said they will be launching an online service that enables XM Radio’s 4.4 million subscribers to buy music they hear on the paid XM radio service via Napster. This new service is scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of 2005 in conjunction with the availability of new XM/MP3 players that let users bookmark songs they hear while listening to the radio for future purchases online.
When the MP3 player is connected to a personal computer the service will match the marked XM titles with songs in Napster’s catalog so that they can be purchased.
Sounds like an interesting concept, but I think Apple will be way ahead of the game when this thing finally gets off the ground.
Subscribers can also use the XM + Napster service to organize playlists using other songs from personal libraries and transfer these unique playlists to the XM players.