Digital music service: Napster against Amazon

When you need to enjoy digital music, do you think buying or renting is better? Napster's online music purchase service and Amazon's recently downloaded MP3 music store all have their own charms. Napster 4.0 offers more options than ever before, while Amazon's store allows easy downloading of music tracks.

Napster still applies a monthly fee-charging policy of $ 10 and provides all the necessary features - adding music to your library, creating playlists to listen to and listen to everything on your computer. If you pay an additional $ 5 / month for the Napster to Go option, you can download all the music on any portable device with PlaysForSure certification.

However, now you can listen to all the music through the Napster website instead of downloading a computer application - convenient if you use a public computer or a network administrator at your office quite rigid in allowing employees to install applications themselves. To buy or copy tracks to a portable music player, you will still need to use the application on your computer with the updated interface similar to the web interface.

Pay to own

Napster's AutoMix feature creates playlists that this service thinks you will like

Amazon's MP3 music store has two attractive elements: low-cost and music tracks that can be played on any portable music player. Amazon does not charge a monthly usage fee, instead it charges for each downloadable music (prices from 0.88-0.98 USD). Amazon offers free DRM digital music tracks from both EMI and Universal (as well as Merge and Rounder). However, Amazon has only about 2.3 million tracks compared to over 5 million copies of Napster.

While still in beta, Amazon's service looks elegant. From the homepage, you can view new and remarkable albums, top music and singers of the day as well as other outstanding information; There is also a category list that appears in the left sidebar.

When selecting a track or artist, click the Play button next to any track to play a 30-second demo, or go straight to the music purchase section by clicking the Buy MP3 button. You can download music tracks compressed at 256kbps to your hard disk or use the Amazon application - with the function to manage your downloaded music and easily allow them to be moved directly to the iTunes utility. or Windows Media Player.

Napster offers many listening options wherever you can use a computer, but if you want to buy a piece of music or an album, think of Amazon.