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Best Buy said this morning that it is \u201cstreamlining Napster’s executive structure<\/a>\u201d — corporate parlance for sacking the faltering music service\u2019s leadership which has had a tough time finding a winning business model in a digital music world dominated by Apple\u2019s (AAPL) iTunes store. CEO Chris Gorog and president Brad Duea are both leaving Napster which was acquired by the big box retailer a little over a year ago.<\/p>\nGorog announced his departure in a farewell post to the Napster blog.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe began with a simple idea \u2013 \u201clegalizing Napster\u201d \u2013 and spent almost a decade trying to perfect that dream,\u201d Gorog wrote in a farewell post ot the Napster blog<\/a>. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t always easy. We were criticized at times for \u201crenting\u201d music. But we thought then \u2013 and still believe quite strongly \u2013 that we had a better approach to digital music. Why buy downloads \u2013 when for a small monthly fee you can have access to \u2013 everything? Well after a lot of years of chasing this dream of \u2013 unlimited access, anytime, anywhere \u2013 it seems to be catching on.\u201d<\/p>\n Erm, not really. Napster had 760,000 in 2008. Today it has about 700,000. That\u2019s not catching on, it\u2019s holding on — for dear life … And, to be fair, the dream to which Gorog refers is a tough one to chase when your service doesn\u2019t work on the dominant media hardware of the day — even after Best Buy acquires you for $121 million. At this point, it\u2019s been eclipsed by a nightmare reallity in which Napster\u2019s legal subscription service stagnates as rivals like Apple\u2019s iTunes and Amazon continue to push it to the periphery of the digital music market.<\/p>\n Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n