Google best fit for Napster - Motley Fool

 

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By Simon Aughton

Posted on 21 Sep 2006 at 15:09

The Motley Fool, an independent investment website, believes that of all the potential suitors for Napster, Google may be the best fit.

MP3 player maker Creative, mobile phone companies and satellite radio operator XM are among the firms that have been touted as possible purchasers of the digital music company, which has appointed a bank to investigate its options amid renewed takeover interest.

But The Motley Fool believes that if Google lets the chance to buy Napster pass, then 'it blows the perfect opportunity to matter in music'.

'It's currently the bronze medalist in video, a booming niche that nonetheless hasn't been as successfully monetised as the digital distribution of tunes,' writes Fool's Rick Aristotle Munarriz. 'Scooping up Napster would make Google an overnight presence to reckon with.'

Napster is a perfect match for Google, he says. It may not be the leader when it comes to selling music subscriptions, that honour goes to RealNetworks, but it has successfully pioneered an ad-funded free music service. And if there is one company that knows about selling ads on the Internet, it is Google.

Buying Napster would also let Google enter the digital music market without upsetting its new best friend, Apple, which has steadfastly rejected suggestions that it should sell music by subscription, rather than the one-time downloads that it says, and the figures would seem to concur, consumers prefer.

Both could then concentrate, as Munarriz puts it, on staring down Microsoft.

'Microsoft is about to introduce its Zune portable-music player,' he notes. 'It will also launch a music service to help feed the machines. Google and Microsoft seem to be locking horns everywhere they go these days. Google may as well arrive early for this round, so it can snag itself a choice seat.'

Munarriz says the deal is just waiting to happen.

'The pieces fit, no matter how you approach them. Google has the breadth to instantly transform a desperate Napster into a profitable concern, yet it can buy up the digital music specialist at its equally desperate pricing.'