Posted on: May 2, 2006 in Music
Nice try Napster
As Darren Barefoot and Paul Lamere, (and others point out) Napster now lets you listen to any of their 2,000,000 tracks 5 times for free. After the 5th time you can either become a subscriber, or purchase the track. From their site:
“You can listen to every track in our 2,000,000 song catalog up to 5 times for FREE. That’s 10 million free plays! After the 5th free play of any single track, you can either purchase the track or become a Napster subscriber. As a subscriber, you can download an unlimited number of full-length songs to your PC. As a Napster To Go subscriber you can transfer those tracks to your compatible portable player without paying per track.”
A few problems though…
Of course this offer is not available in Canada, and even it were, it wouldn’t work on my computer since I use a Mac and the system requirements are:
“System Requirements:
PC only, Windows XP/2000, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.1 or higher, Windows Media Player 7.1 or higher, Internet connectivity
Note: Windows XP and Windows Media Player 10 are required to use the Napster To Go™ service.”
And even if I had a windows XP box, with Media Player 10, I still wouldn’t be able to play the tracks on my iPod, since Napster’s DRM’d tracks will not play on the most popular music player ever released. That’s right. You can’t play any tune you download through Napster on your iPod.
Thanks for coming out Napster. Try again next time…
May 4th, 2006 at 8:04 am
You don’t need a Windows PC and Windows Media Player to use the Napster free service, as it’s browser-based. On my Mac in England, I was able to listen to 30-second clips of their full catalogue through their player, and I guess you should be able to do the same in Canada. But, OK, I agree none of us are going to fall over with excitement at 30-second clips at low bit-rates…