Napster revives as pay site

Napster, the website that helped to popularise online music and was shut down as a hub for piracy, will be relaunched on October 29 as a legal site with 99USc ($1.67) song downloads, its new owner says.

The new Napster will bear little resemblance to the original site, which had a following of as many as 70 million worldwide who were able to swap and download music free.

The original Napster went into bankruptcy amid a flood of litigation from the industry. It was bought last year by music software firm Roxio, which is relaunching it, using a model developed by Apple Computer and others.

The new site, Napster 2.0, will offer one-off 99USc downloads, or a US$9.95 monthly subscription allowing unlimited listening and downloading.

Napster 2.0 claims to have the largest digital music library in the world, with more than 500,000 songs.