The original Napster was killed by the corporate music industry Mafia whose ignorant and inept capos thought that was all they needed to do to simultaneously kill p2p and file sharing.

They were wrong and they've been wrong about everything else ever since, including believing that suing a few thousand of the hundreds of millions of p2p file sharers would be enough to turn errant customers back into good little mindless consumers.

And when Roxio did a Frankenstein on Napster, digging up the corpse, it thought the name would be enough to have significant numbers of eager punters lining up, willing to pay $1 and more for the low-fidelity, lossy, tracks being touted by the Big Four record labels.

It didn't happen and it'll never happen, and now the sorely troubled Napster, nee Roxio, is trying to blame Microsoft and music player makers for its woes.

The Big Four claim more than 300 'legal' music sites are selling all kinds of downloads. This is, however, sheer, unadulterated equine excreta.

There are no successful corporate sites. Not one. And the "booming" online music market so far exists only in the imaginations of the PR hacks who dream up the puff pieces released by EMI, Vivendi, Sony BMG and Warner as 'news' and which are faithfully regurgitated by the mainstream media, which are in turn owned by the entertainment cartels.

Apple's iTunes is the only site which can be said to figure. However, it's loaded with DRM which, given that its function is wholly and solely to support iPod, is hardly surprising.

But the popular misconception, shared by Napster, is that iTunes is a genuine corporate download site and Napster boss Chris Gorog, "has blamed technical glitches from Microsoft and music player makers for hampering his company's ability to compete with Apple's iTunes music service," says Reuters.

Napster, "which shares a brand but little else with the free service that originally shook up the music industry in the late 1990s, has struggled to make its case with investors and consumers," the story has Gorog saying and admitting, "We have not been as successful as we might in articulating the real value of this business."

That's a considerable understatement.

Napster's market capitalisation is about $US160 million (US$215 million), says Reuters, "but it has cash assets of about $US112 million, leaving it with a relatively small enterprise value.

"The company's third-quarter net loss widened to $US17 million for the three months to December 31, from a loss of $US12.8 million a year earlier. Revenue rose to $US23.5 million from $US12.1 million."

How long will it be before Napster's investors read the indelible writing on the wall and accept the reality that their money is going down the toilet?

Also See:
Reuters - Napster plays blame game, March 1, 2006
going down the toilet - More $ problems for Napster, February 9, 2006