Best Buy gives up on the digital music market and sells Napster to Rhapsody for a minority stake in the online music provider.
Napster-- hugely popular source of pirated music turned legitimate paid music service-- was bought by Best Buy 3 years ago for $121M. Back then, according to Gartner, Napster had an estimated 700000 subscribers.
It now has less than half of that amount-- around 200000-300000, with Best Buy failing to use its retail network to promote the service.
Napster will shut down once the deal is finalised, migrating subscribers to Rhapsody.
The online music market remains a wild, competitive jungle-- made even more competitive by free services such as the European Spotify, Pandora and Grooveshark.
