Best Buy, a strong retail partner for Rhapsody, has purchased Best Buy to help expand their offerings into subscription services, pair with hardware and compete more aggressively with iTunes music store. Lots of stories about how this will impact Napster (avoid a big internal shareholder fight that was brewing, effectively removes rhapsody from one of the largest retail channels and gives Napster a purpose) but not a lot of chatter about how it will impact Rhapsody. I think a few things will happen:
- Rhapsody will be moved out of the Best Buy channel next year
- Best Buy will use it’s influence to pair Napster with some additional devices
- Since Napster doesn’t have the same DNA music platform as Rhapsody, it will be more difficult for Napster to build into devices successfully until next year.
- The Blue shirts (Best Buy employees) will have to learn more about music subscription services and hopefully sell it more effectively.
- Rhapsody will hook-up with a different retail outlet for focused promotions.

While this is a bit of a blow to Rhapsody in the near term, hopefully Best Buy will get behind the music service business more aggressively and raise the boat for Rhapsody as well.