News Broadcasting
Napster launches digital music service in Germany
MUMBAI: Digital music brand Napster has launched its digital music service across Germany.
Napster Germany positions itself as the first and only subscription music service available to music fans across the region. German residents can download Napster for free at www.napster.de, where they can also sign up for a free seven-day trial of the service.
The launch of Napster Germany follows the completion of agreements with the country’s major record labels, as well as over 150 independent labels. These agreements allow Napster to deliver more than 125,000 albums — including 20,000 German albums — and music from over 600,000 artists — including 135,000 local acts — spanning all genres,
including rock, pop, hip-hop, R&B, classical and jazz.
Napster Germany features over 1.5 million songs and offers both the Napster subscription service as well as the Napster To Go portable subscription service. German music fans can also purchase songs and albums a la carte from the Napster Light download store, where they can also listen to free 30-second samples of all the songs in the Napster catalogue.
Napster chairman and CEO Chris Gorog says, “Napster is very pleased to bring the biggest brand in on-line music to the number one music market in Continental Europe. We believe German music fans will be very excited to see where we have taken the original genius of Napster and expanded on the ideas of unlimited music discovery and sharing.”
Napster Germany VP, GM Thorsten Schliesche says, “It is very exciting for Napster to bring the first flat rate music service to Germany as we believe this will soon be the preferred experience for digital music fans. A flat rate for unlimited music discovery is a much greater value than 99 euro cents downloads and is quite simply a lot more fun.”
Napster Germany already claims to have a number of business partnerships with brands, including Germany’s consumer electronics goods retailer, MakroMart; Trekstor, the biggest MP3 player manufacturer, which is bundling its i.beat reload player with a six-month Napster To Go subscription in retail outlets across the country; and television broadcaster SAT1, with which it has an exclusive music service partnership.
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI:Â Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
