The music company, Snocap, founded in 2002 by the former Napster founder Shawn Fanning has announced that it was laying off 60 percent of its workforce. The company confirmed also earlier reports from various blogs that it may e pursuing a sale.

In an interview with CNET Snocap CEO Rusty Rueff confirmed that its time to sell the company and he said the layoffs were designed to help make the company more attractive to a buyer.

Snocap was considered as Fanninng’s effort to enter into the legal music download market, but the music companies were reluctant to work with him.

The only major success achieved by Snocap is its partnership with the social networking site MySpace, announced in September 2006.

Through the partnership, Snocap has become the provider of digital music retail tools for MySpace, marking the first music e-commerce deal for both companies. The SNOCAP services enabled artists and labels with registered content to set pricing, create stores, and sell their music in MP3 format.

Snocap said that its MyStores have attracted more than 175,000 registered consumers, and over 80,000 artists have created their own storefronts.

In July this year Snocap has signed a license agreement with EMI to sell the DRM-free tunes through its MyStores.

Despite these efforts, it seems like Snocap failed to become a major competitor in the already crowded digital downloads market, which is dominated by Apple’s iTunes store.