(CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Napster launched its award-winning digital music service across Germany on December 8. Napster Germany is the first and only subscription music service available to music fans across the region. German residents can download Napster for free at www.napster.de, where they can also sign up for a free seven-day trial of the service. Napster Germany features over 1.5 million songs — the largest digital music catalog available in the country — and offers both the Napster subscription service (euro 9.95 per month) as well as the Napster To Go portable subscription service (euro 14.95 per month). German music fans can also purchase songs and albums a la carte for 99 cents and euro 9.95, respectively, from the Napster Light download store, where they can also listen to free 30-second samples of all the songs in the Napster catalogue.
The official launch of Napster Germany follows the completion of agreements with the country's major record labels as well as over 150 independent labels. These agreements allow Napster to deliver more than 125,000 albums — including 20,000 German albums — and music from over 600,000 artists — including 135,000 local acts — spanning all genres, including rock, pop, hip-hop, R&B, classical and Jazz.
Napster Germany already has a number of business partnerships with some of the country's biggest brands, including Germany's leading consumer electronics goods retailer, MakroMart; Trekstor, the biggest MP3 player manufacturer, which is bundling its i.beat reload player with a six-month Napster To Go subscription in retail outlets across the country; and television broadcaster SAT1, with which it has an exclusive music service partnership.
"Napster is very pleased to bring the biggest brand in on-line music to the number one music market in Continental Europe," said Chris Gorog, chairman and CEO of Napster. "We believe German music fans will be very excited to see where we have taken the original genius of Napster and expanded on the ideas of unlimited music discovery and sharing."
"It is very exciting for Napster to bring the first flat rate music service to Germany as we believe this will soon be the preferred experience for digital music fans," said Thorsten Schliesche, vice-president & general manager, Napster Germany. "A flat rate for unlimited music discovery is a much greater value than 99 euro cents downloads and is quite simply a lot more fun." –Jane Cohen and Bob Grossweiner
