Napster in hunt for creative agency in UK
Online music company Napster is searching for a UK creative agency for its account worth about &£2m.
The move follows the appointment of former vice-president of sales and marketing at MP3.com Europe Leanne Sharman to the role of European vice-president of business development based in London.
The US company, a division of digital media company Roxio, is also searching for a media agency. The brief for the agencies will be to target 25- to 45-year-olds for its subscriber service, as well as the youth and student markets for its one-off download services.
Napster, which was originally launched in May 1999, achieved notoriety for being the first free music download site, but became entangled in constant legal battles over copyright infringement launched by the record labels. Napster closed in July 2001, but relaunched last autumn in the US as a legal download site, having been bought by Roxio.
Napster faces competition from many other sites, including industry-based services such as Apple’s iTunes.
Napster will be launching napster.co.uk in the summer. A UK version will be the first phase of a strategy that will eventually be extended to the rest of Europe .
