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NAPSTER TO LAUNCH PRE-PAID MUSIC CARDS IN OVER 14,000
RETAIL STORES FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Cards Will Make Music from Napster Available Without Credit Cards By Mid-November LOS ANGELES, CA - (October 27, 2003) - Just 48 hours before its highly-anticipated nationwide launch, Napster®, a division of Roxio (Nasdaq: ROXI), announced that millions of pre-paid cards for the popular digital music service will be available for sale in nearly 14,000 retail outlets by mid-November. The Napster Card will offer 15 downloads for $14.85, allowing music fans - for the first time - to easily give the gift of digital music through a gift card and bypass the need for credit cards to permanently download music. "The pre-paid card initiative is critical because it eliminates a significant barrier to the legitimate digital music market: How to involve teens and millions of other Americans who don’t have credit cards," said Napster President Mike Bebel. "With the Napster Card, you can give the gift of music without worrying about picking the right band or the right album. It’s just the kind of gift we’re all looking for this time of year. This will instantly get the Napster brand into thousands of top retailers across the country in time for the holiday season." As Napster 2.0 goes live to America on Wednesday, the Napster Card program will greatly extend the accessibility and visibility of Napster 2.0. The Napster Card will be available for purchase at national and regional retailers including: Best Buy, CompUSA, Kroger, Safeway, RiteAid, ExxonMobil, Duane Reade, Diamond Shamrock and Speedway/SuperAmerica. More retailers will be joining the program shortly. Featuring the familiar Napster kittyhead logo, the plastic card closely resembles a credit card. A scratch-off surface conceals a PIN that recipients use to activate 15 credits for permanent downloads from the Napster service. As always, music lovers are welcome to enjoy many other Napster features free-of-charge, including: 30-second music clips, on-demand music videos, decades of interactive Billboard charts, community features, and the online music magazine Fuzz. With this program Napster is capitalizing on the burgeoning pre-paid card market recently embraced by other leading retail brands including McDonald’s and Starbucks. Retail distribution innovator InComm, a leader in prepaid and stored value products, is partnering with Napster on what will be the first mass-distributed music download card ever created. The U.S. stored-value card market is expected to be worth $290 billion by 2006, according to Financial Insights. Napster 2.0 will significantly raise the bar for online music. It enables fans to freely sample the world’s largest and most diverse online collection of music, featuring over half a million tracks. The revolutionary easy-to-use interface allows users to quickly and easily download tracks, transfer songs to portable devices or burn them to CDs for just 99 cents per track or $9.95 per album. In addition to the free online magazine, Billboard charts, music videos, song clips and the ability to email tracks to friends and browse other members’ collections, serious music fans have the added option to upgrade to a premium service that offers unlimited listening and downloading, over 40 commercial-free radio stations and a collection of interactive play lists and community features, all for just $9.95 a month. The Napster Card is the third Napster product on retail shelves nationwide. Last month, Microsoft announced that Napster would be the featured music service on Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, enabling music fans to experience Napster 2.0 from the comfort of their couch using a TV and a remote control. Earlier this month, Napster unveiled the Samsung Napster player, which is available for purchase in leading electronics stores nationwide. The first in a family of portable music devices to come from Napster’s partnership with consumer electronics leader Samsung, the player allows consumers to take their digital music library with them. Napster 2.0 also supports almost all of the top selling digital audio devices sold in the marketplace today. About Napster Napster® is the world’s most recognized brand in online music. Napster has content agreements with the five major record labels, as well as hundreds of independents. Napster delivers access to the largest catalog of online music with more than 500,000 tracks spanning all genres and artists from Eminem to Miles Davis. Napster is a division of Roxio, Inc., (Nasdaq: ROXI), the Digital Media Company, provider of the best-selling digital media software in the world. Napster has offices in Los Angeles and New York.
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Safe Harbor Statement Except for historical information, the matters discussed in this press release, in particular matters related to the launch of the Napster service, net income (loss), relationships with certain corporate partners including marketing partners and hardware and software manufacturers, relationships with content providers, and product development, are forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties such as decreased demand for our products, increased competition, failure to develop new products or improvements to existing products, failure to maintain business relationships with our partners and general economic conditions, that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Additional information on these and other factors are contained in Roxio’s reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the Company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q as filed with the SEC on August 14, 2003, copies of which are available at the website maintained by the SEC at http://www.sec.gov. Roxio assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements included in this press release. Copyright © 2003 Roxio, Inc. All rights reserved. Roxio and Napster are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Roxio, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks used are owned by their respective owners. |
