“In a bid to bolster the image of its music subscription service and lure new subscribers, Napster is returning to the days of yore by offering free music. But as you might expect, there’s a catch. Rather than offering free downloadable music, Napster is taking a page from RealNetwork’s playbook and offering free streaming music to users in an attempt to entice them. With Napster’s offering, users can listen to streaming music from any of Napster’s two million tracks, with one caveat: no single track can be played more than five times (tracked via mandatory user registration),” Ken Fisher reports for Ars Technica.
“The free web-based offering utilizes Flash, presenting the user with a basic player application, a window for album art, and another for advertising. It works for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux users, and does not require the installation of any particular player software (other than the aforementioned Flash). The music streamed is of lower-quality than their commercial tracks, and my subjective tests indicate that the quality is also less than that offered by Rhapsody’s ‘competing’ free service,” Fisher reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Is flaunting impotence just before death natural?
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Related article:
RealNetworks launches new Rhapsody services, gives away 25 songs per month – April 26, 2005
or incompetence
First?
MDN Word: Steps
I think it’s clear that as Napster STEPS down to the rocky road of oblivion, it’s depserately giving it one last go. But of course, It iain’t gunno wrk
Love it! Now I can try a song 5 times before I go over to iTunes and buy it there!
Assuming its available, of course.
Two words: Audio Hijack
MDN Magic Word: “end” Write your own punch line.
It’w called ‘Testing the market’. We all know the results.
Is flaunting impotence just before death natural?
That’s funny. I was going to write “An obvious sign of a company’s final death throes”.
I just see this as an oportunity to listen to the entire song before as mentioned above, “Buying it on iTunes”.
Forget Napster, use Pandora for streaming radio. It’s an excellent service. And it’s free.
Tommy Boy, you got there before me …. Talk about an invite to piracy!
MW: many, as in, “there will be MANY tracks stolen via this service”
How desperate are these guys?
Meanwhile, Apple is about to pass Dell on market cap again! Whooohooo!
WHAT???? This is not about this article…what is an MSNTV2 ad doing on MACdailyNews??????
is MDN turning into an adMoneyWhore????? I think so.
Is this a web-based service that works with Macs? Does it lock everyone out who doesn’t use Internet Explorer for XP?
I might actually try this. So sue me. Its free music from a huge catalog.
Okay, spoke too soon without reading the second paragraph.
Audio Hijack would work, but the Flash based download quality sucks booty.
Napster is dying
@gforce
turning????
never been anything else.
As for marketing, this is a good move to promote music artists…
On the technical point of view… I say, “Whatever!”
Napster has always been the ripoff king.
Napster #1 – free access
Napster #2 – paid subscripion access – easily cracked DRM
Napster #3 – ad based listening service, low bitrate, for the theives.’
Isn’t it true that Sony/BMG owns Napster?
Lets see how smart you really are.
Disney signed on as a sponsor! I bet this was SJ’s idea — let Napster die a very slow death.
too bad they sound so bad.. dunno what type of flash compression they are using, but it sounds awful…
oh yeah.. and you can only listen to some songs for :30 seconds…
Y bother with this or iTunes ,u can get free music,videos, pics, documents, and programs of limewire.
http://www.limewire.com
“Napster launches free Web music service with a catch”
The catch is that the service doesn’t actually work but you’ll still be charged monthly.
Now I need a nap.
Love it! Now I can try a song 5 times before I go over to iTunes and buy it there!
HA! HA! EL-OH-FREAKIN’-EL!!!
You know this is exactly what’s gonna happen! What else are Macintosh users supposed to do?
Napster. Thpfft.
I hope a subscription service for iTunes is another one of those things that apple announces after always stating the contrary. I want to explore new music first, then ultimately buy those that I like. I hate looking at albums I bought in iTunes that turned out to be crap.