It was relaunched last month offering individual songs for 99 cents, albums for $9.95 or monthly subscriptions - for listening only, not copying - for $9.95.
Napster went bankrupt after a federal judge ruled in 2001 it had violated copyright laws. By next fall, it is to be made available to all 83,000 undergraduate and graduate students on campuses across the state, as well as faculty and staff.Īs huge consumers of music, students have driven the file-sharing epidemic begun in 1999 by Napster, the brainchild of Shawn Fanning, then a college student himself. The cost to the university is ''substantially less'' than the $9.95 fee that individual subscribers pay for the Napster service, he said, though he declined to disclose the precise terms.Ībout 18,000 students in the university's residence halls will be the first to get the service in January, university officials said. Spanier said the university will pay for the Napster service out of the $160 information technology fee students pay each year. If they want to keep the songs permanently or burn them to a CD, though, they will have to pay 99 cents each.ĭr.
They will be able to download the music to use on three personal computers as long as students are at Penn State. The service will allow students to listen to an unlimited number of songs as often as they want. For some students, the deal may seem as though Prohibition has ended, and drinks are on the house.