The financial world may be collapsing all around us, but don’t tell that to Best Buy. The largest consumer electronics retailer in the U.S. has bought Napster for $121 million, the marginalized also-ran of legal music downloads. Now, unless Best Buy knows something we don’t— we have a pretty good idea of how the everyday guy thinks, we think—this ranks right up there with dumb decisions in the world of tech.

Why, exactly?

As much as we hate to sound like Apple fanboys, even their most diehard critic has to admit that the iTunes Store really is, in the eyes of Joe Public, the place to download music legally. All of these other companies, such as Napster and Amazon, really are just fighting for scraps. And even while some of these other stores may offer something for certain users—DRM-free, high bitrate songs from Amazon are a great deal in their own right—it’s damn near impossible to convince the a regular 9-to-5 guy of that. All he wants to do is turn on his computer, open his music player (iTunes) and grab a song or two.

So for Best Buy, even with its massive retail clout, to go ahead and buy Napster seems sorta silly. Does Best Buy expect to completely change the mentality of every person that walks through its stores? Sure, it could give away any number of songs with an in-store purchase, but we’d wager that most people wouldn’t even bother—how much do you want to bet that they’d be a pain in the ass to redeem?—with such things.

But again, maybe Best Buy knows something we don’t. But we very much doubt that the company will have much success in trying to convince many people to leave the familiarity of iTunes.

Sale Info [Napster via Silicon Alley Insider]