Napster has relaunched the Napster.com website by allowing U.S. customers to listen to music free, the company announced Monday.The move makes Napster the first digital music service to offer free and legal on-demand music to customers, the company said. Customers who sign up for a free account on Napster can listen to about 2 million music tracks through a Web-based music player, and customers can listen to each song up to five times for free.The advertising-supported Napster.com also points customers to places where they can purchase and download songs or sign up for premium services, the company said. Napster will eventually expand the free service to customers outside the United States.With the new service, Napster is attempting to find a digital music model that satisfies fans, musicians, music labels and copyright holders, Napster Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Chris Gorog said in a press release. With Monday’s announcement, the company believes “we have taken a significant step toward achieving this goal,” he added. Napster on Monday also announced two new features, including NapsterLinks, which allows customers to add links to free Napster music to e-mail messages, instant messages and websites. NapsterLinks are URLs that link to specific songs, albums or artists in the Napster.com catalog, and the URLs are created using a free tool, the company said. Also announced is the Narchive, a public music archive where customers will be encouraged to contribute to an ever-expanding audio and visual dialog of the “people’s history of music,” the company said. Customers will be encouraged to add personal stories, photos and memorabilia about music in personal entries at the Narchive. Using NapsterLinks, they will be able to link to the music and artists they write about. The Narchive will be available in a beta release soon, Napster said.Napster also offers monthly subscription plans allowing for music downloads and transfers to portable MP3 players.Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage.— Grant Gross, IDG News Service Related content feature 13 essential skills for accelerating digital transformation IT leaders too often find themselves behind on business-critical transformation efforts due to gaps in the technical, leadership, and business skills necessary to execute and drive change. By Stephanie Overby Jun 05, 2023 12 mins Digital Transformation IT Skills tip 3 things CIOs must do now to accurately hit net-zero targets More than a third of the world’s largest companies are making their net-zero targets public, yet nearly all will fail to hit them if they don’t double the pace of emissions reduction by 2030. This puts leading executives, CIOs in particul By Diana Bersohn and Mauricio Bermudez-Neubauer Jun 05, 2023 5 mins CIO Accenture Emerging Technology case study Merck Life Sciences banks on RPA to streamline regulatory compliance Automated bots assisted in compliance, thereby enabling the company to increase revenue and save precious human hours, freeing up staff for higher-level tasks. By Yashvendra Singh Jun 05, 2023 5 mins Digital Transformation Robotic Process Automation feature Expedia poised to take flight with generative AI CTO Rathi Murthy sees the online travel service’s vast troves of data and AI expertise fueling a two-pronged transformation strategy aimed at growing the company by bringing more of the travel industry online. By Paula Rooney Jun 02, 2023 7 mins Travel and Hospitality Industry Digital Transformation Artificial Intelligence Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe