Napster, still doggedly referring to itself as “the biggest brand in digital music” in their press releases, today reported financial results for its fiscal second quarter ended September 30, 2005.
“Napster posted a net loss of US$13.6 million, or 32 US cents a share, compared with a net loss of US$15.3 million, or 44 US cents per share in the year-ago quarter. Revenues of US$23.4 million compared with US$9.3 million. Analysts’ consensus had forecast Napster to post a second quarter loss of 47 US cents and revenues of US$21.7 million,” Reuters reports.
“For the second quarter ended 30 September, the total number of Napster paid subscribers grew to 448,000. For the quarter ended 30 June, paid subscribers, excluding university subscribers, totaled 402,000. It was unclear if the latest second quarter subscriber figure included university subscribers,” Reuters reports.
Full article here.
Napster ended the second quarter with a total of $127.3 million of cash, cash equivalents, and short term investments, including $13.8 million in net value of shares of Sonic Solutions stock.
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Revenues of $23.4 million for the quarter with a net loss of $13.6 million. For the purpose of comparison, on October 11th, Apple announced their earnings results for the quarter ended September 24, 2005. Apple reported revenue of $3.68 billion and net income of $430 million. Apple’s music revenue totaled $1.477 billion for the quarter. In the last quarter, Apple matched Napster’s total quarterly music revenue of $23.4 million sometime during the 34th hour of their quarter. Now, about that “the biggest brand in digital music” stuff? Do the math.
Related articles:
Apple passes 600 million iTunes Music Store songs sold milestone – October 25, 2005
Apple Q4 05 earnings report: best quarter & best year in company history – October 11, 2005
Study shows Apple iTunes Music Store pay-per-download model preferred over subscription service – April 11, 2005
Napster’s dirty little secret: changing subscription services into downloads is easy – February 18, 2005
Cornell University’s Mac users ‘uniformly unhappy’ with Napster – January 19, 2005
College students refuse to buy a single song from Napster – July 10, 2005
Cornell University wrestles with Napster’s exclusion of Mac and iPod-using students – September 08, 2004
Why are Cornell’s Mac students being forced to pay for useless Napster? – September 07, 2004
Napster schools to Mac-using students: bend over and take it – September 04, 2004
Apple launches ‘iTunes on Campus’ institutional site license program – April 28, 2004
Napster: the only thing missing is the sock puppet – August 04, 2005
SmartMoney: Napster is a snooze, gushing money and renting music is un-American anyway – July 06, 2005
Napster, other Windows Media-based music services ‘chasing a niche opportunity’ – June 29, 2005
Napster To Go Soon? Reports $24.3 million net loss on $17.4 million net revenue – May 12, 2005
Napster users admit sharing passwords to save on subscription costs – April 08, 2005
Napster is a joke – April 05, 2005
Mossberg: Apple’s iTunes Music Store vs. Napster To Go – March 18, 2005
Napster CEO Gorog: Steve Jobs ‘must be pretty frightened’ of Napster To Go – March 14, 2005
Napster’s math does not add up – February 28, 2005
Napster’s dirty little secret: changing subscription services into downloads is easy – February 18, 2005
Napster feels the heat over flawed copy-protection scheme – February 17, 2005
Apple CEO Steve Jobs warns record industry of Napster To Go’s security gap – February 16, 2005
Users thwart Napster To Go’s copy protection; do the music labels realize the piracy potential? – February 15, 2005
Napster-To-Go’s ‘rental music’ DRM circumvented – February 14, 2005
Napster CEO Gorog: ‘it’s stupid to buy an iPod’ – February 10, 2005
Napster’s ‘iPodlessness’ doesn’t bode well for its future – February 10, 2005
$10,000 to fill an iPod? Napster’s going to end up with egg on their face – February 04, 2005
Why ‘Napster To Go’ will flop – February 03, 2005
Napster CEO: We’re ‘the biggest brand in digital music, much more exciting than Apple’s iTunes’ – February 03, 2005
Here’s a prime example of “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” offered by an English professor from the University of Phoenix:
The professor told his class one day:
“Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The
process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right.
As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, so sending another copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on
back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in
order to keep the story coherent.
There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.”
The following was actually turned in by two of his English students: Rebecca and Gary.
THE STORY:
(first paragraph by Rebecca) At first, Laurie couldn’t decide which
kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for
lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.
(second paragraph by Gary)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron
now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than
the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had
spent one sweaty night over a year ago. “A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,” he said into his transgalactic communicator. “Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far…” But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship’s cargo bay.The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.
(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. “Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel,” Laurie read in her newspaperone morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed
unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from
her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. “Why must one lose one’s innocence to become a woman?” she pondered wistfully.
(Gary ) Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu’udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu’udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the
coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid Laurie.
(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writingpartner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.
(Gary) Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centered tediousneurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium.
“Oh, shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F–KING TEA??? Oh no, what am I to do? I’m such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels
(Rebecca)
Asshole.
(Gary)
Bitch
(Rebecca) F__K YOU – YOU NEANDERTHAL!
(Gary)
Go drink some tea – whore.
(TEACHER)
A+ – I really liked this one.
Soon to be renamed “Dirt Napster.”
A+ for Jay Rice too. More interesting than any news related to Napster today.
Go Barsa!
Jay Rice,
Wow, not sure how this relates to anything, but thanks for the laugh!
Jarrett:
I would look here first –
http://www.apple.com/support/imac/
(Note to Jay: Actually, I’m pretty sure men are from one of Jupiter’s moons, Lysithea and women are from Masvingo, Zimbabwe. It was on the internet so it must be true.)
Have a lauch at this:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=NAPS&t=3m&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=aapl
Apple vs. Napster stock comparison for the last 3 months.
Oh, and Apple is up over $1.25 in premarket today to above $61
MDN word: trying
Did the financial results include Microsoft’s contribution from the settlement? I hope so.
Jay Rice
Very funny. Along with AAPL it made my morning.
Impressive — NAPS is still not a penny stock! Just a matter of time.
Jay Rice,
Hilarious!
On a related note, if a company more than doubles its revenue but didn’t cut its losses by half then that company is in trouble – plain and simple. Apple has nothing to worry about right now especially as more and more people are buying iPods. By the time iPod sales slow down, Napster would have bled all the cash and would be trying to find someone to buy it.
Do the math, losing about 30 US per subscriber
This news makes me wonder if the Record companies are more intelligent and less greedy than we seem to think.
We all knew Apple is cleaning up in the online music buisness, the industry does too. I wonder if their attempts to raise prices are aimed at giving places like napster a shot in the arm to boost online music sales into the primary revenue stream for their companies rather than a nice paycheck from Apple every now and then…
Nah
Napster was the biggest online p2p before it became a legal seller, or should I say, renter of music to PC only users. Now it is but a dot of sand in the vast desert of iTunes music store. Sorry Napster but your label is very missleading and down right false advertising.
Jay
I actually just blew a snot bubble halfway through that. Seriously funny.
Heh. Things are looking up for Napster. No, seriously. Yeah, they’re gushing money like water through a sieve, but not as much as last year and less than was expected by analysts. Plus revenue went up. It’s funny, but this will probably be seen as an improvement and increase their stock price.
Oh wait, it’s down 7%. Never mind. I guess the sight of Napster improving is overwhelmed by the strong possibility of them running out of cash before they can turn it around.
Mark my words: This will end with Napster being purchased by somebody.
Maybe Samsung would be interested, since they’re interested in creating a music store but now are not creating their own music store.
Maybe not.
Or drink some chamomile tea.
Or just get destroyed by the Anu’udrian iPod mothership (that’s Apple).