Napster today said that the company was able to grow the subscriber base for its music download service 16% in the first quarter of this year sequentially and 54% year over year to 547,000 customers. Including 59,000 university subscribers the firm’s total now comes to 606,000 paying users.

The subscriber growth translated in climbing revenues, which hit $26.8 million in the first quarter (fiscal Q4 2006.) However, the company is still in the red : Napster reported a total net loss of $2.9 million. For fiscal 2006, the firm saw its revenues increase to $94.7 million, up from $46.7 million in fiscal 2005. Net loss came in at $57.9 million, down from $67.0 million in 2005. The company ended fiscal 2006 with cash reserves and cash equivalents of $104.2 million.