Unlike iTunes, Napster was a reasonable 6MB download. Unfortunately, that’s one of the few good things I can say about it.
When I first opened Napster, the window was too small, so I maximized it. Unfortuantely this resulted in the window’s title bar being covered by my taskbar (which I have placed at the top of my screen), and an empty space being left at the bottom of my screen. This is not how applications should maximize. The only way to see the titlebar again is to either move my taskbar or right-click on Napster’s taskbar icon and choose “Restore”. Napster also does not conform to Windows color settings, and just like iTunes, the menus DO conform to Windows color settings, resulting in an ugly clash between my Windows colors and Napster’s skin. Bad, bad design.
The main screen has a huge area with a flash animation advertising Napster Premium. Why waste space? Tell me about MUSIC. That’s why I’m using Napster! And there are too many scrollbars. When the window is at its default size, there’s a vertical and horizontal scrollbar around the main window area. Then there are two more vertical scrollbars within this area, one each for the New Releases and Advance Tracks section.
The selection is better than iTunes in some areas, worse in others, which means that it sucks. The music is in DRM-protected WMA format. DRM sucks, and WMAs sound hollow. Maybe someday there’ll be a digital music service that doesn’t suck. But until then, I’ll be sticking with Amazon, eMusic, and good old-fashioned music stores.
I just pitched a bitch about Napster over in IMHO. They stiffed me on the five free downloads. You can’t find what you want because the music is listed in popularity order instead of alpha order (note to Napster: I really don’t give a rat’s ass what other people want to listen to), the jazz section is nearly non-existent, and there doesn’t seem to be any search function.
There is a search function. On the top menu, to the right of the HOME, BROWSE, and LIBRARY buttons. You can search by artist, album, track, and member.
Because it’s illegal, the quality of the files is uneven at best, and even though my individual purchase doesn’t make much of a difference, I know that I wouldn’t like it at all if people were using file sharing services to get my music, and it certainly doesn’t help the artists to refuse to pay them for their work.
I agree with your reasons, but I can’t see myself supporting a service that doesn’t provide the one feature every illegal P2P system has - a standard file format that will play everywhere.
I wish they’d just set up a “tip jar” web site, so I could download songs in a useful format from (insert P2P site here), then give each artist a quarter, which is more than they’d be getting from iTunes or Napster anyway.
That is the reason why Napster and iTunes and MusicMatch and BuyMusic all suck. This issue is much more important than my complaints about the store’s selection and interface.
