Napster UK gets thumbs up
The first few reviews of Napster’s new music download are starting to arrive, and surprise, surprise, they have on the whole been rather positive.
The Guardian’s Neil McIntosh in particular reckons ‘If you have a PC and broadband, this could be a very good pick indeed.’
Click here or simply read on for Neil’s review
Napster unveiled its new service for the UK last week – and it is likely to tempt a few music fans to give digital music a go. While the old Napster helped kick-start net music piracy back in 1999, the new version is legal, offering more than 500,000 tracks for live streaming or download.
Unlike rival services, the new Napster doesn’t just sell you tracks for a one-off price. It also offers a subscription option; for £9.95 a month you can get unlimited streams, or “tethered downloads”, of the service’s catalogue, which means if you stop your subscription, the tracks stop playing.
To burn tracks to CD, or transfer to portable music devices, you have to pay extra. Despite that, Online’s first go with the new service suggests it is the new front-runner in music services – and even the expected arrival of the iTunes Music Store later this year will struggle to shake that.
The killer feature is that subscription encourages you to browse around the more esoteric corners of the catalogue – just as the old Napster did. If you have a PC and broadband, this could be a very good pick indeed.
www.napster.co.uk
