Monday, we sat down with Rhapsody President Jon Irwin to get a little more insight behind why the company bought fellow online music service Napster. As part of the acquisition, Rhapsody acquired all Napster subscribers and other IP assets from Napster owner BestBuy. Meanwhile, Best Buy received a minority stake in Rhapsody.
Irwin tells us he looks forward to bringing the Napster subscriber base over to Rhapsody. Rhapsody has around 800,000 subscribers and Napster reportedly has around half that. Irwin declined to give us specific subscriber numbers, but says that the combined company will release this number n the next few months.
In terms of what Rhapsody will actually integrate from Naspter, Irwin says that the music streaming service will be looking to tie in what Napster has done in the connected device area. Check out the video below for his comments on Rhapsody’s recent Facebook integration, and more.