Rhapsody Is Now Officially Napster, User Growth Flat At 3.5M Globally
[UPDATED] The planned transition uniting the Rhapsody and Napster music streaming services under the Napster brand is complete and with the announcement came paid subscriber stats.
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This expected news came from Napster today:
"All products operating under Rhapsody have been changed to Napster, forming one global brand across 34 countries. Today, the Rhapsody app will become the Napster app automatically via app store auto-updates, so customers don’t have to do anything to keep listening to their favorite tunes. Playlists, music libraries and other account settings won’t change."
The company also cited 3.5 million users globally, a figure that they've been touting for the last six months.
With the change comes a refreshed design and UI.
This was a really bad move. Do they have any idea how many firewalls are configured to block Napster? Although Napster has not been around for a while it is still on most firewall black lists.
Now I cannot use Rhapsody/Napster at work and I’m sure there are a lot of users finding out the same thing today.
I paid because I liked the GUI. This sucks
I remember MusicMatch.
What happened to TrackMatch
Rhapsody disappeared from my laptop.
I am a paying subscriber?
Why did they name themselves after a product based on theft?
I will definitely never use their service now.
Napster has been a legitimate online music store since 2002. Where have you been? The name only changed temporarily when Rhapsody merged with Napster in 2011, but the company still existed even if the name didn’t. If you’ve been using Rhapsody at all since 2011, you’ve been supporting Napster. The fact that they were sued 15 years ago under their old business model should have no baring on what the new company is up to. They paid their dues and are now making the music industry millions of dollars by converting music streams into cash flow. What reason could you possibly have to hold a 15 year grudge against a company that made amends with the industry long ago???
What kind of inept executives at a company would opt for the Napster black screened ominous brand over the people pleasant dancing fun Rhapsody brand. Not realizing the merger, I just spent the past 15 minutes trying to figure out what virus I had that would convert the “Rhapsody.com” address I typed into my search engine to “Napster.com”. AND, GET THIS, THE INITIAL SCREEN DIDN’T EVEN SAY “RHAPSODY IS NOW NAPSTER”. That combination of operational missteps at the most important moment of a merger/transition is a guaranteed to”red flag” that will drive this company into the ground if immediate changes aren’t brought around. Mark my words!
Thanks Rhapsody for not sending out even one e-mail to your loyal subscribers, letting us know what was going on. But rather promote confusion by keeping us in the dark. You SUCK!!!!
yep.I paid for a month of service and couldn’t log in….didn’t have time to figure it out and now I’m seeing this. I log into napster now and can’t even get to a home page. I will cancel my subscription. Too much work.
Lost everything when my computer crashed. Bought a new computer and wanted to re-download my purchased music. A lot of purchased music (lots of money spent people). They didn’t care. They don’t care. They pretty much told me not going to happen. They can blow away in the wind and disappear for all I care. This company needs to fail. Horrible horrible company.
MusicMatch was the best. The only reason I’m still using Rhapsody today is because I’m grandfathered in at the MusicMatch price, $4.99 a month.