Does a paid-for Napster spell the end of sharing on the net?(Brief Article)

It's make or break time for Napster now users have to pay

The Napster story is clearly a modern morality tale, one that tells you all you need to know about what sort of debris is produced when old and new worlds collide.

It is a yarn about trailblazers, anarchists and visionaries and what happens when they run up against the reactionary forces of corporate culture as personified by ... er, rock and roll bands. Such as those buttoned-down, anally retentive suits Metallica, and those career-conscious merry pranksters U2.

It was Metallica (career retail units shifted: 80 million), you will remember, who led the legal charge against Napster and the whole concept of the digital music sharing community.

The legal shenanigans and corporate manoeuvres have rumbled on in often surreal fashion for more than a year now -- and if you ever doubted the surreal nature of this story, look no further than last week's events, when a certain Konrad Hilbers became Napster's new chief executive.

Hilbers was, until this appointment, a senior executive at the Bertelsmann-owned BMG Entertainment, one of the "big five" record label groups -- and BMG, like the rest of the big five, still has an active lawsuit against Napster, citing copyright infringement. Even more bizarre, though, is the fact that since October last year Bertelsmann has actually been a strategic business partner of Napster, helping it move to a new business model which, it is hoped, will keep everyone happy.

With Hilbers at the helm that model will be implemented as soon as possible, probably within the next month. As expected it will be subscription-based, but not, as many predicted, a pay-per-play system. "It will be a membership-based service for which users will pay a flat monthly fee," a spokesperson told Campaign last week.