Just got an email from napster saying their new service was now ready for use. I know people have been asking about pay music services so I'll try this one out and let you know what it's like.

I signed up early so I get 5 free tracks, after that all tracks $.99 with albums fof $9.99. To pay you'll need to give a credit card number before logging on.

For first song I decided to download The Last DJ by Tom Petty. I searched for Tom Petty and got a list of all his songs, selected the one I wanted and then after confirming that it's what I wanted (something you can turn off, but it seems useful so you don't accidently pay for something you don't want) it was downloading. Speeds went from 30kbps to about 80, not bad for a T1 line.

Haven't looked too much at the selection, but it seems they didn't think to include Things I Know For Sure to the album library. ;)

These are MP3 quality, right? Are they 128, 192, or 256?

Should be interesting to see if all those kids screaming "I'd pay to download for music, CDs are just too expensive" will put their money where their mouth is.

This is just a "pay as you go" thing, not a monthly fee plus cost per song, is it?

The only time I think I'd use this is for albums I couldn't get locally or that cost too much to get over the net, or maybe to try out a band I couldn't otherwise find a clip of on the net (which isn't often these days). So, if the selection is "BMG quality," then they won't have the kind of stuff I'm likely to want. I still prefer the actual CD to downloads, so when it's available on CD, I'll buy it that way.

WinMX is where it's at:)

I use WinMX for downloading boots, but I can't find the obscure stuff I want to hear on there anymore.

@mckerney

can u burn those downloads onto CD? $0.99 per song still seems a little high for downloadable music...$0.50-0.75 would be more like it.

sturmie

Originally posted by sturmie
@mckerney

can u burn those downloads onto CD? $0.99 per song still seems a little high for downloadable music...$0.50-0.75 would be more like it.

sturmie

Yes, you can burn onto CD.

Also, you can get a 30 second preview of a song before you chose to download it or not.

As far as bit rate, it's a 128kbps .wma file

Originally posted by Ksyrup
I use WinMX for downloading boots, but I can't find the obscure stuff I want to hear on there anymore.

Yeah, it's pretty hard to find stuff that's not mainstream.

Originally posted by vexroid
Yeah, it's pretty hard to find stuff that's not mainstream.

A bit of a disappointment so far with napster, they have nothing by Jimmy Eat World pre Bleed American and no The Ataris pre So Long Astoria.

Yeah, if all I can download for $10 a CD is the stuff I can buy at Best Buy for $8-11 a CD, this is going to be a disappointment. I guess this is for those people who want to make their own mixes of the crap they hear on the radio. Woo-hoo!

Originally posted by mckerney
A bit of a disappointment so far with napster, they have nothing by Jimmy Eat World pre Bleed American and no The Ataris pre So Long Astoria.


Maybe you'd have better luck during the evening when people aren't at school and work.

Originally posted by Ksyrup
Yeah, if all I can download for $10 a CD is the stuff I can buy at Best Buy for $8-11 a CD, this is going to be a disappointment. I guess this is for those people who want to make their own mixes of the crap they hear on the radio. Woo-hoo!


And if I'm going to spend money, I want to own the actual CD.

Originally posted by vexroid
Maybe you'd have better luck during the evening when people aren't at school and work.

I think this has a different setup than most file sharing networks. Being it's a pay site it seems like they have a library that you search and download from, not really mattering who is online at the time.

Originally posted by vexroid
Maybe you'd have better luck during the evening when people aren't at school and work.

I could be wrong, but I don't think that's how this version of Napster works. They have licensing agreements with the record companies and, I presume, decent-sounding MP3s of the actual song you think you are downloading, which wasn't always the case with Napster. And, I don't think anyone will pull the plug on your download when you're at 96%.

Originally posted by mckerney
I think this has a different setup than most file sharing networks. Being it's a pay site it seems like they have a library that you search and download from, not really mattering who is online at the time.


Oh, I see.

Originally posted by Ksyrup
Yeah, if all I can download for $10 a CD is the stuff I can buy at Best Buy for $8-11 a CD, this is going to be a disappointment. I guess this is for those people who want to make their own mixes of the crap they hear on the radio. Woo-hoo!

I will definately still be buying CDs, but this does seem like it will be a good thing to get some songs off. In some cases this will save money over the $15 CD, but I don't forsee myself buying too many whole albums off Napster. And I don't listen to the radio so I wouldn't fit the last clasification.

Dola:

They do have one Pedro the Lion song, so I'm hoping that their library will increase over time to get some of the more non mainstream stuff that I listen to.

I will pay for music when it's $.25 per song downloaded. But I'll be willing to go up to $.35 ($6) for a hard copy. Until then, screw the price gouging industry.

I think I might buy an album later tonight so I can see and tell you guys what that's like. Any recomendations will be appreciated.

Something that we can mosh to... :D

Alright, what you download is a .wma file that is copy protected as to how many times you can burn it to CD, how many copies you can make, etc. I like to keep my music collection in .mp3 format though and was able to burn what I had downloaded to CD and then rip those songs to .mp3 format.

I say poop on this.

Originally posted by JeeberD
Something that we can mosh to... :D

Can you mosh to No Motiv?

Deep Blue Something and Counting Crows are also being considered.

In addition to the $.99 per song and $9.95 per album options, I understand there is also a $9.95 monthly "download all you want" option as well. That would be the way to go, IMO.

Also, in order to listen to songs you download beyond your subscription period, you HAVE to burn them to CD then rip them back to your hard drive as MP3s as a workaround to this:

Skip down to the Premium Service area at the bottom: http://www.napster.com/terms.html

Quote:
A "Download" is a Track that you may save to the hard drive of your personal computer and play back as many times as you want for so long as your subscription is current. You may make an unlimited number of Downloads while your subscription is current. 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.

just use iTunes.

Originally posted by mckerney
Deep Blue Something and Counting Crows are also being considered.

Deep Blue Something? Wow, some local boys made good. One of the few Denton bands that made it big...

Yeah, you gotta get them. I love moshing to "Breakfast at Tiffany's"...

Originally posted by Maple Leafs
Should be interesting to see if all those kids screaming "I'd pay to download for music, CDs are just too expensive" will put their money where their mouth is.

What parent is going to let those same kids use a credit card to download music?