Best Buy Nabs Napster, Will Market Devices to Downloaders

Zachary Rodgers | September 15, 2008 | 0 comments

Best Buy has agreed to buy Napster, partly for the chance to sell tech products to its user base.

The music retailer plans to cross-sell devices and other products to Napster's 700,000 subscribers. By doing so it expects to "capture recurring revenue by offering ongoing value over a mobile digital platform," it said in a statement.

Interesting notion, but is it logical? From a marketing standpoint, what can Best Buy achieve owning Napster that it couldn't by simply partnering with it? $121 million is an awful lot to spend on an ad deal, after all.

And from a business standpoint? I'm no music industry analyst, but considering Napster lost $16.5 million last year and faces accelerated innovation from behemoth competitors (See MySpace Music's news this morning), it's definitely a gamble.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Managing Editor Zach Rodgers oversees ClickZ's award-winning coverage of news and trends in digital marketing. As a journalist he has reported on the rise of web companies, data markets, ad technologies, and government Internet policy, among other subjects. His stories have appeared in Mashable, Search Engine Watch and Kauffman publications, among others, and he has been cited by government and advocacy groups such as the Center for Digital Democracy, U.S. PIRG, the U.K. Independent. He previously held editorial roles at TurboAds, WirelessAdWatch, Internet Advertising Report, ChannelSeven.com, and Datamation. He can be found on Twitter at @zachrodgers.