Best Buy Nabs Napster, Will Market Devices to Downloaders

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

bestbuy.jpgBest 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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