Napster Narrows Loss, Sees Boost in Revenue, Site Visitors

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on November 9, 2006 - 2:15pm.

Los Angeles - Napster has announced that its second-quarter net loss narrowed to $9 million, down from $13.6 million a year ago, while revenue was up 9% to $25.5 million. Unique visitors to Napster.com grew 42% in the quarter, which the company said will help grow its new ad-supported free music service.

The company announced that its subscriber base is now 518,000, including 31,000 university subscribers. During a conference call with analysts, Napster CEO Chris Gorog focused on the potential of the company's mobile music services; Napster recently launched mobile downloads in Japan with NTT DoCoMo and a mobile subscription service in the U.S. for Cingular subscribers.

"We believe the dramatic growth projected for music-enabled cell phones will provide a very significant growth driver for Napster going forward," said Gorog. "It would be difficult to overestimate how important we believe the Windows Media Audio music phone ecosystems will be to catalyzing the growth of our business."

In September, Napster hired UBS Investment Bank to explore the possibility of a sale of the company or partnership. Napster still expects to see solid double-digit annual revenue growth during 2007.

Related Links:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061108/law097.html?.v=65
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/061108/earns_napster.html?.v=2 (AP)
http://www.napster.com