Anyone else playing with Napster 2.0 ?
I just downloaded it maybe 10 minutes ago, and I’m browsing around the song library. The interface isn’t bad, and there seems to be quite a lot of content available.
Songs are $0.99. I haven’t bought any yet, we’ll see if I end up in DRM-hell. 
Anyone else?
Hmmm, the Napster servers seem overwhelmed (or the software buggy). If I click “buy song” it tells me it can’t contact the server.
Bastards didn’t give me my five free downloads as promised. Also, doesn’t anybody listen to The Eagles? Can’t find them anywhere. Also couldn’t find a ‘search’ function; they don’t seriously expect you to scroll through all the damn lists, do they? Also, the lists of artists were in order of popularity with downloads instead of alphabetical so you can find what you want. Not impressed, so far.
The search is right there at the top right of the window.
The lists come up with most popular at the top, chronological beneath that. You can click on the column headers to sort on that category.
How do you know the didn’t give you your free downloads?
When I got the email saying “Napster is back, click here and when you log in, you will be prompted to get your free downloads”, I clicked there, did the install, but saw no prompt when I logged in. Perhaps there is someplace on the site where one can find the bloody things?
Squeegee: thanks, I’ll give it a shot.
99 cents a download is steep. if there was a flat monthy fee that would be different.
Actually, there’s a Napster Premium that I think is pretty much exactly that – a $10/month subscription version of the service. Dunno the details, I like my music ala carte.
Wow, good news all over today: Apple fixed iTunes for XP so it supports my CD burner! So now I can use both Napster and iTunes (and I don’t need to use my Mac! *). 700k songs! Whee!!
*no implied criticism of people who like Macintoshes. Macs just aren’t my cup of tea; I’ve used 'em for 16+ years, and I like XP/NT/etc better for personal use. To each their own.
I got my five for free–I just picked them out. I double checked it by requesting a statement of charges done in the last 30 days. (There were none).
Just keep in mind:
The songs are in wma format and can only be played on the computer they were downloaded on, plus 4 or 5 more if you have downloaded Napster onto them, and syncronized the accounts.
You cannot directly convert the wma files to mp3 files since there are Digital Rights Management locks on them.
You can, however, burn your purchases as a regular audio CD(which you could rip into mp3s.) You have to use the internal Napster CD burner program. There is also a stand alone CD label maker they will give you for free to make the labels and jewel box covers.
Music downloads FAST (but there seemed to be a lot of server problems last night).
There seemed to be alot to pick from. Tons of Rolling Stones, for example, but no Beatles. Some Britney Spears, only one Madonna song. I found a Fleetwood Mac song, Hypnotized, that I have been looking for, along with a Peaches & Herb single from 1980 that is aparently only on vinyl. Its good, also, for 30 second snippets if you have forgotten what the song sounds like.
99 cents isn’t too bad, but I would like to see some better pricing, or how about some sales! And if you were to buy an entire album, it would be nice to be able to print out the “official” packaging and liner notes, just like you would get in a real CD.
I think it’s worth having.
It’s all in WMA. I’ll never use it.
Any idea if the encrypted WMA files will work on other devices that play WMAs, like a Rio Volt?
I don’t know. I’m not good enough for them, apparently. I only run Windows 98 :rolleyes: ;p
Well, the choices seem to be WMA (Napster), AC3 (Apple) or pirating mp3’s. I don’t like any of these options very much, but the first 2 are legal; is there some (legal) alternative I’m missing that, um, sucks less ?
I stay away from WMA files, thus I will stay away from the madeover Napster. Besides the Microsoft taint, they sound inferior to AAC, MP3, and Ogg.
I believe iTunes for Windows allows for downloading as mp3 and not the properitary ac3. However, if you have an iPod and want to transfer, you’ll probably have to download as ac3.
Nope. You get AAC (not ac3, oops ) from iTunes.
To get MP3, you have to burn a CD and re-rip it. Same deal with Napster and WMA. It’s all quite silly.
Geoduck, why do you say WMA sounds inferior to MP3 ? Ogg or AAC I can believe, but MP3?? You can encode an extremely inferior MP3 file with any number of utilities; there are a zillion crappily encoded MP3’s up on the internet. 128k fixed-rate MP3 sounds just barely (and sometimes un-)acceptable to me, but the handful of WMA’s I downloaded from Napster sounded darned good. YMMV.