Napster

Formerly the pariah of the music industry, Napster 2.0 has risen from the ashes of its former illegal self. It used to be said that you could find any music track on the illegal service and the new incarnation has to deal with the high expectations left by the original system. Luckily, the new legitimate version is still a download behemoth, weighing in with 700,000 tracks. It also sports a facelift that consigns the original Napster to a distant, ugly memory.

Features
Unlike the original one-trick pony Napster (but what a trick), Napster 2.0 is teeming with extra natty options. Why yes, you can download or burn CDs from a library of 700,000 songs, but that’s only scratching the surface. On the homepage there are buttons to access the new magazine, the several radio stations (where you can also build your own station) and the message boards where Napsterites banter about more than just Beyonce’s new skirt.

Performance
On a standard broadband account this is a dawdle-free zone, as Napster’s servers provide white hot, and reliable, download times. Burning tracks is a cinch too. Fans of their WinAmp or other jukebox software, may find the detachable Napster player could interfere with their listening if it’s open at the same time. On a more musical note, some of the categorisations are rather suspect: since when did Robbie Williams qualify as a ‘Dance/Electronic’ artist?

Ease of use
Installing the software is a trifle, though using it isn’t immediately a piece of cake. To browse the library takes more than a couple of left mouse clicks, as you have to first press the Browse tab, then on a genre you want to peruse, followed by another click on the sub-genre box. It does eventually become intuitive, but at first you might find yourself in a few dead ends. It’s easier to use the Search function to find what you’re looking for.

Value for money
For £9.95 a month, a subscriber can download tracks to play through the Napster software until the cows come home, but burning them to a CD costs an extra 99p a time. There’s a big incentive to burn them to CD as all the downloads only function for as long as you’re a subscriber.

Non-subscribers can’t download full songs without paying for them, although they can hear 30-second samples of songs. For non-subscribers, it costs £1.09 a time to burn a track to a CD.