Napster had a free trial over the labor day weekend, so I figured I'd give a shot. I found it to be a big disappointment overall.

First off, the program is a bloated POS. It's slower than molasses than January. Everytime I click something there's a huge pause before it responds. There are far better programs out there that work much faster (iTunes for instance).

The website makes it sound like for $9.95 a month, you have unlimited access to as many songs as you like ("We Free you from paying 99 cents a song!"). This isn't really true, as I soon found out. First, I tried to burn a CD...nope, can't do that unless you BUY all the songs you are burning. Secondly, not all songs are covered. I found several that were "Buy Only"...you can't even download them unless you pay. What?! Might as well go with a no-fee service.

Granted, they do have a $14.95 service that lets you put as many songs as you want on your MP3 player. That seems like a pretty good deal if you download 15 songs or more a month. But I imagine that there's some sort of "catch" to that program too, just as there was for the $9.95 service.

Not impressed, but I'm thankful for the free trial so I could see what the service was like.

I haven't tried it, but I believe once you cancel your subscription there are codes in the mp3s which make them unplayable.

This is correct, but I understood that part going in.

The Rhapsody service is exactly the same. I did the free trial and downloaded a ton of songs, but found I needed to pay to burn them to CD. Of course, there are ways around paying to burn them, as I figured out, but since it's real-time, it can take awhile. But I am cheap.

BTW - cancelling the Rhapsody free trial practically takes a miracle from God (they will NOT let you off the phone until you've either bought the service or agree to extend your free trial so you have to call back again to cancel).

Wasn't Napster free for years before? Not just a weekend trial?

Ask Lars Ulrich about that.

This new Napster and the old one share a name, a logo, and a mascot, that's about it.

CHeap?

www.allofmp3.com

Yup, it sucks. The worst part? Even after you BUY the songs you can only burn them as one long track which prevents you from skipping from track to track - absolutely horrible.

Great post. Your posts always crack me up.

The company I work for was one of the main sponsors in getting this legal Napster off the ground in Canada, so I was comped a few months. When it came time to pay, I cancelled. I just found that there wasn't enough new music monthly to warrant the monthly fee, especially since I have everything I wanted up until that point.

The program itself was horrible. Also, in the US, if you signed up for a full year, you would get a free MP3 player. In Canada, if we signed up, we got five free MP3s.

The studios simultaneously shot themselves in the foot and fucked themselves in the ass when they had the old Napster shutdown. If they had all joined together and set a fair plan with Napster then, everyone last one of those studio heads would be sitting on a solid gold crapper at this point. I see these big corporations make these mistakes over and over, and I can't believe no one ever learns from their (or even others' ) mistakes.

I'm right there with you .

I'm not sure I understand what you mean? If you buy a song it makes it one track? Isn't that how all mp3s are?

If you mean -- the album, that's simply not true. I've bought about 3 albums from Napster and have burned them to CD -- and they are seperate tracks and you can skip from track to track... Not sure what you're talking about.

As for Napster... I prefer them to ITunes because I don't have an iPod and I like that their WMV files play great on my Creative Zen. I've never had a problem with them. I think their software is a little bloated, but so is Itunes. I use Itunes for downloading Podcasts, but if I were to buy some songs or an album, I'd go with Napster.

Any program that doesn't sync up with my iPod isn't worth my time.

iTunes pretty much has me covered between podcasts, "exclusive" material and overall ease of use; whatever I can't get there, I buy in-store.

I gotta go with DodgingCars on this one. I've downloaded/purchased lots of songs through Napster, and they all exist on my hard drive as individual songs, and burned onto CD or uploaded to my mp3 player just as individually.

Maybe you have a problem with your burning software or something.

You're experiencing those issues cause it was a lbor day free trial. You could download mostly all you want but burning etc. was restricted. Otherwise I think both itunes and napster are great.

That seems kinda lame. Let people use a crippled product as a trial, and they assume it's always that way and will therefore never use it after that. I'm not saying everyone, just many folks, and probably the actual target market.

I'm sure there were some who spent 23 of the 24 hours "grabbing and burning", but they never would have signed up anyway. Offer your best product as a trial, and you might turn many more people on to your service.

Nowhere when I signed up for the trial did it say it was crippled. It said I was getting the exact same thing I would be getting if I subscribed to the 9.95 plan.

Oh. I'm not on any of their subscription plans. I use Napster just to buy individual tracks or sometimes albums.

However, I'd consider their download to your mp3 player subscription plan if it worked with my player -- but they don't support it yet.

I tried burning them through napster: all one track, tried burnig through nero: couldn't burn because of the license, tried through windows media player: kept getting unknown error messages.

Weird. However, I don't think this is typical.

I definitely don't think it is either but it did piss me off. I asked if they ever planned on letting other burning software to be used (i.e. work around the license) and they gave me a response that made no sense so I took as a 'No'.

I did a free trial on the "new" Napster when it was first introduced. Downloaded songs actually sound almost as bad as AM radio - 128 kb WMA files (I think that's what they were - maybe 160) are NOT even remotely close to cd quality. Anyone who pays for this service when vastly superior options are available (emusic, Yahoo Music Unlimited, etc) for less money is a crackhead.

I guess I'm a crackhead then.

I honestly can hear no difference between tracks bought on Napster or any other music service.

Emusic was good when it was unlimited download for $15/mo.