Napster answers question "Why no iPhone app?"

Digital music service provider Napster announced it will expand its mobile services to most web-enabled devices, regardless of carrier. Napster presently charges PC subscribers $5.00 per month for five MP3s and unlimited listening--mobile users may now redeem credits and download tracks over the air as well as receive a back-up MP3 copy for their PC. m.napster.com will offer mobile consumers its full library of more than nine million songs--to promote the launch of the mobile service, Best Buy (which acquired Napster [1] for $121 million a year ago) will offer $15 worth of Napster music (15 songs to keep and three months of unlimited PC listening) at no charge with the purchase of any contract mobile phone.

Napster also addressed the question of why it has not yet introduced a mobile music application for Apple's iPhone. The company said it has developed an on-demand streaming app for the iPhone platform, including personal playlists, albums and radio stations--however, because of the costly licensing fees associated with streaming to a mobile device, Napster has not yet submitted the app for App Store approval. "iPhone users can use m.napster.com and song credits to purchase songs, but the songs purchased are sent to the PC only as Apple does not allow third parties to download songs ‘over the air' to the iPhone," Napster adds in a statement.

For more on the mobile Napster service:
- read this release [2]

Related articles:
Napster [3] launches DRM-free MP3 storefront
AT&T turns up Napster Mobile [4]