Sunday, July 20, 2008

What price a cat-in-headphones logo?

The legitimate Napster has failed to capture the world's imagination in the way it did when it didn't ask for money and, despite several relaunches, the company is still struggling.

However, it's quite attractive as a takeover target - not because the brand has much value in it, nor because of the business model. More because it launched on a massive pile of cash from the first investment it pulled down and, according to Bloomberg, it's got about USD70million of reserves and investments. The total value of Napster shares as of Friday morning? A shade over USD52million.

Effectively, then, if you could buy control, you're in profit already. And, while there aren't many people signed on to Napster, their heft could be useful to add to another struggling service, such as Rhapsody. Napster - the service which helped reduce the value of recorded music to less than zero - is now worth more dead than alive.


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