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Earnings: Napster Q2 Revs Fall; Paid Subs Drop Sharply

imageStruggling online music player Napster (NSDQ: NAPS) has reported Q2 revenue of $30.3 million, a decline of 5.9 percent from $32.2 million a year ago. Net loss was fairly flat at $4.3 million ($.10 per share) compare to a loss of $4.2 million ($.10 per share) a year ago. The company said it had 708,000 paid subs at the end of the quarter, a decline from 760,000 at the end of Q1. The company also touts good results from its new MP3 store, but it’s hard to get a grip on what these numbers actually mean: “The introduction of MP3’s into our line-up has created positive trends for Napster with increases to visitation and user engagement. In addition, track sales per subscriber were up 10% in July, month over month, with total track sales up 5% during the same period.” For the coming quarter, the company sees revenue of about $30 million again.

In its 10-Q filed along with the release, the company explains the declining subscriber rolls (sort of): “Paid subscribers at June 30, 2008 were approximately 708,000 compared to 761,000 at March 31, 2008. This decrease occurred because new added subscribers were not sufficient to offset our normal cancellations during the period.”

Release | Webcast (5:00 PM ET)

Aug 11, 2008 3:31 PM ET

Posted In: Money, Earnings, Companies, Napster

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Comments (1)

Aug 11, 2008 5:51 PM

It means that their churn rate and customer acquisition costs are out of whack.  They spend more on marketing to generate a subscriber than they earn on the lifetime value of a subscriber, and they’ve already burned through the upfront investment capital allocated to getting started.

Lucas Gonze

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