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.

Comments

It's Pressplay

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Napster spoof

[pheph]

Downhill battle has posted a great spoof of what the new napster website might look like

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.

Nuts to that, use CD Baby

[kevin_conaway]

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.

You have iTunes Music Store beta

[yerricde]

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.

my impression of Pressplay

[cmh7r]

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.

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 - .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.

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.