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Monday, February 27, 2006
Old dog Napster learns new tricks, wins best in show
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Geekboy’s journey through the sad digital landscape that is pay-for-play music websites draws to an end.
So far, Yahoo’s Music Machine and Apple’s iTunes have proven unworthy of my cash.
If you have an iPod, you are pretty much stuck with iTunes. No other pay-for-play site really supports the iPod because Apple doesn’t want them to. If you have a different portable music device, like the very nice Creative MP3 players, you have better options.
Rhapsody, which is owned by Real Networks, the folks that pioneered streaming media, appears to be OK at first. It looks great, burns CDs and has awesome online radio stations.
But the songs you download are in the Real Audio Protected file format (rax) and will only play in Real Player, the most bloated piece of junk software on my computer.
So forget Rhapsody. You can do better.
Napster is like an old college friend who grew up to be a lawyer. You don’t want to like him, but you can’t help yourself.
Napster, if you recall, was a file-sharing program that first stood the music industry on its ear. It was shut down in 2001 after a flurry of lawsuits not seen since the final Ford Pinto exploded.
Napster was created by a college dropout in 1999 during a 60-hour coding marathon. It was brilliant. Napster allowed computer users to share and swap files, specifically music, through a centralized file server. Current peer-to-peer clients such as Limewire borrow heavily from Napster but do not use a centralized file server, making them almost impossible to shut down through legal means.
Now Napster is a pay-for-play music website, the latest incarnation of Pressplay, the much-maligned site first foisted upon the public by a consortium of record companies.
Napster has a great interface; once you see it, you will forget iTunes exists.
And Napster burns CDs with no problems, has the great online radio stations that you can fast forward through, has artist information by the renowned “All Music Guide” and, best of all, anything you download is in a file format WinAmp can play.
For the $15 monthly fee, you’re allowed unlimited downloads. You can put music on up to three non-iPod portable players and log in and listen on up to three computers.
The problem here, as with all other pay-for-play sites that allow you to download a track without buying it, is that once your quit paying the monthly fee, the download quits working unless you have also purchased it.
If you want to keep the songs or burn them to a CD, you have to buy them, not just download them. A song costs 99 cents at Napster.
I bought Elliott Smith’s “Kill Rock Stars” album for $9.99 and burned it with no problem.
Will I pay $15 a month to keep the music playing at Napster? Probably not.
I think the best choice for most people is pretty simple. If you have an iPod, use iTunes.
It is the only site that supports Apple products. iTunes fails on several fronts, however. If you buy a song, your name and who knows what other personal info is included in the file header. If you like having your rights trampled on, more power to you. Also, I could not get the CD burning software to work at iTunes. Other lows are the 30-second audio clips and pitiful radio stations. You can listen to and download the whole song on other sites and the radio stations are much better. Since you can’t download a whole song at iTunes without buying it, there is no monthly fee, something unique in this roundup.
If you have a non-iPod music device, you have choices to make.
Yahoo is cheapest, $12 a month for unlimited music downloads, burnable tracks are 79 cents. The Launchcast radio station sound quality is not as good as Napster or Rhapsody, and overall the user experience falls a little short. I did not try to burn a CD here, but I am told it is possible. Downloads are “wma” format and can be played in WinAmp or most other players, so that’s a plus.
Rhapsody and Napster offer unlimited music downloads for $15 a month, burnable tracks are 99 cents. Both sites are very well designed and I had no technical problems with them.
Both burned CDs with no problem.
But Rhapsody files are in their proprietary “rax” format, which means you have to use Real Player if you want to listen to downloaded songs later. Their software stinks. I refuse to use it as my main media player.
I liked Napster the best. The “wma” file format can be played in WinAmp and the radio stations are awesome. The interface is the best.
If new music is your life, you will like any of the four. If you have a PC, I suggest Napster and Yahoo. If you have an Apple, or an iPod, go with iTunes.
Personally, I will stick to buying CDs from Amazon.com. I can listen to samples there and order what I want. Used CDs on Amazon or eBay are cheap and a factory CD will always sound better than what is downloaded from the Internet. And call me old fashioned, but I like thumbing through the literature that comes with a CD.
And best of all, once you own the CD, the record companies can’t take it away from you if you decide to quit paying their monthly extortion fees.
