Napster has once again hired UBS to seek out a buyer for the troubled company. As dissident shareholders press for changes within the company, Napster insists it "committed to enhancing value for all Napster stockholders." OK, but how great can shareholder value actually be enhanced?

Buying Napster's subscribers (and keeping maybe half of them) is one way for Rhapsody to up its subscriber base. It's got to be cheaper than launching an MP3 store, with a $50 million marketing campaign, that has among its goals to upstream buyers to its subscription service. Napster paid about $43 each for AOL's subscribers in January 2007 (about half of them actually took up and stayed with Napster). That would value Napster's subscribers at $30 million. Given the state of the subscription model, as well as the lack of competing bidders, I have to assume each subscriber would fetch far less than $43. Any way you slice it, its subscribers are one of the few things about Napster with much value. In spite of this, the company is currently trading at roughly cash on hand.