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Napster Tries Again
intheory writes "As it states on the site, The Cat is Almost Back. Napster, following a singificant delay, beleagured by legal and ethical rhetoric, reappears as a pay-to-play service. With some similarities to Apple's iTunes, will Napster regain its place as the premiere music distribution service? Additionally, the man behind the magic, Shawn Fanning, receives a thoughtful write up." I'm pretty wary of the new Napster, as the only thing it seems to share with its predecessor is the name.
Roxio bought PressPlay and Napster's "brand". Then they re-launch PressPlay with the Napster's name.
There ya go. It's just PressPlay with a different face and a different owner. Same tech team.
Now that we have to pay for napster, it's not that cool anymore.
But now that I'm out of college, I'm not that cool anymore either.
Ive said it before and ill say it again, cdbaby.com kicks ass. They let you listen to 2 minutes of 5-7 songs off an album to see if you like it, if you do buy it, if not go on to the next one! All their albums are reviewed by the editors to give you description of what the music is like. Plus, after your first purchase, they send you a free cd with each purchase thereafter (usually a mix cd which is pretty good.)
Disclaimer: all though this read like an ad, its not. Im just a satisfied customer.
This is a great alternative to emusic and such pay for play setups where you waste a quota trying to find music you like.
They appear to have designed for XP, and just happened to not have used anything incompatible with 2000 in the process so it works there too. XP and 2000 are very close relatives, while 98 is a whole different beast.
Here's what I got whilest using my TiBook
Please don't complain about lack of the new Napster on Mac OS X because 1. remember that it took a while for Napster to make a Mac client for its old network, and 2. as a TiBook owner, you're in on the beta test of iTunes Music Store, which seems equivalent to what the new Napster offers ($1 singles, $10 albums).
They also don't even mention Windows 98
Because of its (lack of a) security model, Microsoft's Windows 9x operating systems aren't that great for much other than running legacy DOS apps.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Check out the Napster Animations. They're pretty funny =)
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
I've been a happy subscriber to pressplay for the last several months and have mixed feelings about it changing its name to napster due to the obviously negative impression that many (eg. company IT people) have of that name.
.99 is not that bad considering that you pay 15 bucks for a cd on which you like 4 songs. Plus, you can rip the cd that you burn those songs to to mp3 and use on any device you want. That said, I haven't bought that much music from them.
Nonetheless, its a great service for the most part:
1. I can download all the music I want for one flat fee of 10 bucks a month. I can only play it on the computer I downloaded it to, but thats the only computer (at home) I listen to music on.
2. I can stream music at work... this means I can go group an artist or genre or group of songs into a playlist and have it streamed to my while I work. I can also listen to their radio stations.
3. Purchasing music -
Downsides:
1. Music selection - lots of good music, but some artists that I like are missing.
2. Pay - its taken me a bit of time to get used to the idea of paying something for music (albeit just 10 bucks a month)
Alot of posts here have said that this is some phoney service thats doomed to fail - a wannabe iTunes. I think that many more features are available than with iTunes and I urge you to give it a shot... even just the free trial if its available when they startup.
It did have an initial surge, but has been averaging about 500k songs a week. Any guess how much OTHER music services are selling a week?
I have to think that anything actually making money, and lots of it, for the owner is pretty far from being "dead".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I get my free Disney material at the public library. Advantages of the library vs. other methods:
You may be surprised at the selection offered by your public library. I sure was.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"You may copy each Download to up to two additional personal computers that you own (i.e. a total of 3 copies). You may not share Downloads with anyone else. Napster automatically renews your rights to all of your Downloads at the beginning of each Subscription Month (as defined below) so long as your subscription remains current. This means that in order to play any Download after the end of a Subscription Month, you must log on to the Service so that Napster can renew your rights for those Tracks. The Client will count the number of times that you play a Download, including while you are offline, for royalty accounting and analysis purposes."
SO LET ME GET THIS FUCKING STRAIGHT....
The rights to the music I bought are RENEWED each month, as long as I have a subscription...?
So if I cancel my subscription, then none of my music will play any more? FUCKING WHAT?!?!?!
ME, that's what!
As you can see, this service is riddled with restrictions and the music that you buy is locked into a proprietary format... There are no guarantees about your ability to retrieve new copies of these tracks in the future, and your ability to back them up may be limited (see the "2 additional computers" clause.) It's unclear whether you'd even be able to use the same tracks that you purchased after reinstalling your Windows OS. Use of the tracks with a portable device looks like it's dependent on that device having sufficient DRM installed, and probably must be supported by WMP.
Finally, it's limited to US citizens that are using MS Windows and/or Mac OS.
I don't think this service will be received very well, and its only similarity to any other form of Napster is its name.