Napster

[TurkishMonky]

I'm thinking of subscribing to napster ($10.00 month for unlimited music)... only question is - is it worth it? what's the selection and quality like?

any thoughts, or anyone who has tried it?

[Slater]

not worth it. Your songs will only work as long as you have a subscription to the service. Even if you download them to an iPod or something, they stop working if you don't plug it in to let it see that you're still a member.

Pretty much, you're subscribing to a radio station that lets you choose what's on it, and the music's gone once you're done.

Edit: There is one way to keep your music, and that's to use the app's built-in CD burning program. Lets you burn to a CD, then an app like Windows MP can rip it from the CD in non-time-influenced-codec form.

[Mr. Rogers]

just get iTunes. .99 a song

[TurkishMonky]

napster does allow cd burning? i didn't know if it did or not.

Pretty much i would still buy my absolute favorites (i curently do the $.89 per song thing), but i seemed to have developed a halfway large "would like to listen to" list of cds, and was thinking it may be cheaper to subscribe for a year then to buy all those cds.

thanks for the input. anyone kow about their selection, thouh (esp. on christian artists)?

...or i could just try the 1-week trial and see for myself, lol...

[Steeltemplar]

napster does allow cd burning? i didn't know if it did or not.

Pretty much i would still buy my absolute favorites (i curently do the $.89 per song thing), but i seemed to have developed a halfway large "would like to listen to" list of cds, and was thinking it may be cheaper to subscribe for a year then to buy all those cds.

thanks for the input. anyone kow about their selection, thouh (esp. on christian artists)?

...or i could just try the 1-week trial and see for myself, lol...

Here is a recent CNET review of Napster.

Here.

This article on the general subject of online music services is about a year old, but you may find it useful.

Here

This review of online music services is more recent, October 2005.

Here.

I personally use iTunes for popular music. Then for classical I buy CD's because I wish to have the absolute highest sound quality. I think that iTunes uses 128KBps, which is decent quality but not great. I rip my own CD's in Variable Bit Rate at high quality.