Napster Inc on Wednesday unveiled a portable version of its music subscription service, backed by a $30 million ad campaign that takes aim at rival Apple Computer Inc's popular iPod player. Napster's promotion includes a Super Bowl television spot urging fans to compare the costs of spending $10,000 to buy and transfer 10,000 songs from Apple's iTunes store to an iPod, with the $15-per-month fee to carry songs from a catalog of over a million tracks on Napster-compatible players.

Some analysts were surprised by the $30 million that Napster plans to spend on its promotion, which represented about 70 percent of what many had expected it to spend on a full year of marketing.

Copyright Reuters, 2005