Review by: Museekster

The name and logo are about the only things remaining from the former illegal P2P program. Napster has now turned into a fully legal music service.

Catalogue

Like Apple's Itunes Music Store Napster has a catalogue of 1 million plus tracks, but Napster has a lot more to offer. While the iTunes Music Store is based on a pay-per-download model, Napster has subscription plans that provide unlimited downloading for a monthly payment. This may look like a dream come true but there is one catch, your downloads will stop functioning as soon as you cancel your subscription. You can prevent this by really buying the songs for 99 cents a piece or the albums starting at $6.95.

Price

Napster offers two subscription plans:

Napster Membership: $9.99 per month
Napster To Go: $14.99 per month

Napster Membership

For $9,99 a month you:

• have unlimited access to over 1 million tracks;
• can listen to more than 50 radio stations;
• can create your own radio station;
• can share music with other Napster members .

You can sign up for a 14 day free trial.

Napster To Go

For $14,99 a month you get everything the Napster Membership plan offers plus you can transfer an unlimited amount of music to your MP3 player. Mind that your player has to be "Napster compatible".

Pros

• Great catalogue;
• Lots off additional features;
• Unlimited downloading;
• Album reviews and artists biographies;
• 100% legal

Cons

• Copyright protection (DRM) on all files;
• Subscription model;
• Napster to Go only works wit a limited number of MP3 players. iPod is not Napster compatible;
• The unlimited downloads are rented. As soon as you cancel your subscription your downloads become useless;

Conclusion

The additional features definitely make Napster the best legal music service. There is no other service that makes discovering new music such a great experience by providing things like album reviews, artist biographies, special live recordings and such.
The unlimited downloading is great, you can download any track you discover for further evaluation. You read an album review and can immediately download the corresponding tracks.

The Napster To Go subscription enhances this feeling of freedom. The fact that you can transfer all tracks to an MP3 player makes the DRM protection a thing you tend to forget. Too bad, this only works with a limited number of players an that the iPod is not in the list of Napster compatible players.

Pricing for subscriptions is rather high compared to other services.