Roxio, Inc., parent company of Napster, today announced that it is raising revenue guidance for the fiscal fourth quarter ending March 31, 2004 “due to strong consumer demand for both its online music service and software products.” Roxio now expects revenue for its Napster division to increase to approximately $5.5 million, which compares to $3.6 million in the fiscal third quarter. Revenue for its software division is expected to increase to approximately $26.0 million, as compared to $15.2 million in the immediately preceding quarter.
“Roxio
If Napster is #1 in “PC-only” (aka limited platform choice) then how can the likes of BuyMusic survive? Does Vegas have odds on when companies will fold?
Napster has become the most popular PC-only online music service in the U.S.,
LOL
This is hilarious. This sounds like one of those special categories in the MTV Movie Awards: “Best Supporting Role in a Movie That Went Straight to the Video Shop”
I ran this thru AltaVista’s “Gorog to English” translator:
“Napster has become the most popular PC-only online music service in the U.S.” really means: “Napster is so distantly in second place that I am fscked – now how do I put this mess to bed without looking like a complete idiot and losing my job? Thank God, at least, that I don’t have BuyMusic’s numbers.”
And they announce this when iTunes announced 50 million sold. Too funny.
M$ could do a free song promotion with Napster to help them out. Everytime your Windows-PC gets a virus and you have to reformat your wintel box you get 10 free Napster songs. That would certainly propel Napster ahead of iTunes and make up for some of the lost time f*cking around with windows.
Wall Street is crazy. Roxio stock is up 25% while Apple’s stock is down 2.5%. OK, their software numbers looked good but not enough to make up for the money they must be losing at Napster.
“Look, we are losing less money than we originally projected.” And people think Martha made statements to keep her stock price up?
The Street is currently reacting to the terrorist attacks in Spain as well as some other security concerns, so big companies like Apple are taking hits. Roxio’s price is probably not being affected by such things.
OK, Napster & Chris Gorog really yank my chain.
In February they announced they had “attracted over 1.5 million basic and premium members.” Basic & premium members? They only have one membership level – premium at $9.95/month! If all 4th quarter revenue of $5.5m is from ‘members’, which it presumably isn’t, they would have only 184,255 premium subscribers!
But in their first 3 months they sold 5mil songs. Assuming they haven’t lost any momentum, they will sell the same 5mil in the 4th quarter. That leaves only $500K in revenue from subscription services which translates into less than 17,000 ‘premium members.’
Where is the revenue from the colleges? Does this revenue not come in until after April 1st? Did these universities get a huge price break?
Uh, doesn’t PC mean “personal computer”? Did macintosh not have a computer called the Power Computer. Really Gorog needs to adjust his language to the neatherthal brutes that will listen to him: “We are the # sales of music for an IBM compatible.” That will make people understand.
Actually I think Gorog is Apple’s secret weapon.
But good on them for raising their estimates.
If the “projection” turns out to be true, then Napster is doing quite well, considering what they’re up against. Even though they are obviously inferior to iTMS, they’re still generating a some revenue. I wonder, though, how much of it is due to subscription, and how much to sales?
Subscription revenue is no threat at all, because people aren’t investing in a WMA library through subscription fees.
I don’t think we need to worry much about ol Napster. I would be more worried about M$ coming in with their famous unfair business practices and dirty tricks. They spend an enormous amount of R&D cash. I am afraid that all this cash is focused on figuring out how to rip others off of their innovation, ideas, hard work and development rather than to actully come up with any innovation of their own.
Even “IBM compatible” doesn’t work anymore since the G5 uses PowerPC chips made exclusively by IBM. So in a sense, Macs are now “IBM compatible”.
I found it interesting how Roxio combined their software results with Napster to make it look better. In the end, what matters is whether their loss widens or narrows. As Steve noted, online music sales have very little, if any, profit. Roxio will continue to hemorrhage cash until Napster reaches a breakeven point, if it ever does. I suppose laying off a bunch of employees, as they did, will help narrow the gap, but realistically, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
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steve just has to say the iTMS is the world’s largest PC-compatible music store and let Gorog explain what he means by PC-only….
“PC-only” means only among those that are ignorant about iPod and iTunes! NOT MANY!
“PC-Only” still makes me chuckle. Since iTunes is available for both Windows and Mac, it isn’t “PC-Only.” Thus, they’re #1. The term they should use–at least for now–is “WMA-Only.”
Personally, I’d love to see the statistics on how many downloads from iTMS are Mac users and how many are Windows users.
The inherent danger in making predictions is relying too much on the trend of extrapolation. My old professor said that what is worse the “Garbage in, gargage out.” is “Garbage in, gospel out.”