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General discussion

Anyone Using Napster or Something Like it?

Jul 30, 2005 9:33AM PDT

I am looking at downloading a program to mass music on my new zen micro. What program is the best for this? I got a free month of napster with the purchase of my zen micro, but I am not sure about downloading music. I mean can I just use the free subscription and download all my music for free and then cancel my subscription? Or do I have to have it for so many months? Any advice would be appreciated.

Discussion is locked

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Free month of music
Jul 30, 2005 2:01PM PDT

The card you got was probably for a free month of Napster To Go.

Basically what Napster To Go lets you do is download as much music as you want, and transfer it to a compatible MP3 player. The Zen Micro works with Napster To Go.

The catch is that once you've stopped paying a monthly subscription fee of about $15, none of the music you've downloaded can play anymore. With Napster To Go, you're essentially "renting" your songs, and as long as you keep paying that $15/month, you can continue downloading to your heart's content.

Once you stop paying, the licenses for your songs expire.

You have to synchronize your player with your Napster subscription regularly so that the songs on your player get their license updated.

I've used Napster To Go with my iRiver H10, and it's a pretty decent service. At $15/month, it's quite expensive considering that another subscription service--Yahoo! Music Unlimited (which also works with your Zen Micro) is just $7/month.

<a href="http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/">music.yahoo.com/unlimited/</a>

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Other good choices
Jul 30, 2005 2:10PM PDT

If you read my previous message and decided that you didn't want to go with Napster To Go or Yahoo! Music Unlimited, there are other good choices.

First of all, Napster and Yahoo! both offer music for download as well. Most of the songs will be 99 cents each on Napster, and 79 cents each on Yahoo!. You can keep these forever, but there are restrictions on copying and transferring the music.

Both Napster and Yahoo! have an adequete library of music. Napster offers music at a quality of 128Kbps, and Yahoo! offers theirs at 192Kbps. Yahoo!'s music is of better quality, but it takes longer to download as well, and I couldn't tell a difference when listening on my MP3 player.

Unfortunately, the Zen Micro does not work with the iPod-exclusive iTunes. Musicmatch is another good choice if you want to shop for music and buy songs a la carte for about 99 cents each. The quality is a decent 160Kbps.

Wal-Mart offers music downloads as well, but its collection is a bit more limited than competitors. On the positive side, however, its downloads are 88 cents each.

Real's Music Store offers the highest quality music--192Kbps AAC--and a very good selection. The weekly top-ten tracks are 49 cents each.

All the services mentioned above (except for Real) offer music in WMA format, which people say sounds a bit worse than AAC.

All of the services above are popular, and you can decide which one to use.

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Napster
Jul 31, 2005 12:05AM PDT

So I have to sync my player every so often to make sure I still have a subscription? lol That is really smart. Yahoo is just the same though? Becuase half the price and better music quality sound like the way to go. Thanks for the info.

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Same with Yahoo!, Rhapsody
Jul 31, 2005 2:16PM PDT

Yes, every so often you must sync your player so that the licenses for the songs on your player are updated. You must download licenses once a month from the Internet; this is a process done automatically by the music software client.

I used to use Napster To Go, and found that it's pretty decent. I don't like Yahoo!'s selection of music as much as Napster and Rhapsody, but for the price, it's worth it.

Note that Yahoo! Music Engine is in beta and crashes very often, and playlists you create in it don't transfer to portable players.

music.yahoo.com/unlimited