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Summary

Napster is the last one out of the gate. This service shares mainly the Napster name, not the peer to peer or much else. Although it does offer more ways to share track lists with other users.

Napster claims a lot of tunes, but it's really no more than the others in my first browse. They, like Rhapsody, offer a streaming service/download service where you can listen to anything they have for $9.95 per month. Unlike Rhapsody, they don't require this, you can download songs without joining premium service.

What premium offers is downloading of the songs, but if you stop your service, the songs won't play, and you can't burn them unless you pay .99 per track. So it really is like Rhapsody with cached songs. The selection is bigger than just what you can buy. I mistakenly said otherwise here, but that's because if you search and aren't a premium member, stream songs only don't appear! It is very misleading, and I wouldn't have know unless I joined premium.

Also, once you join premium you get another hidden surprise, some of the "buy" songs now will show as "buy only" and you can't play them! Another misleading thing until you join premium.

Like iTunes, partial albums don't have a "buy album" button, and some double albums that didn't look partial to me had no buy button!

When I reviewed this it was the first day out. It was rough, the server wouldn't respond at times, and the interface has lots of little bugs. The interface is a bit confusing, even though at first it looks like a knock off of iTunes, it really isn't has well done. I'm sure the bugs will get ironed out quickly.

One feature they have that is missing from the rest is an easy way to see what you've bought, and redownload it on one of your other two computers. The other services basically say back it up or it's gone if you lose it!

Pros: Better DRM than others, redownloadable songs.

Cons: Buggy interface, partial albums expensive, streaming limited to purchasable tracks.

Costs

Tracks are .99, and up, 9.95 for many albums. Has partial albums, but not downloadable at album price, and they aren't marked that way, you have to pay attention.

File Format

Protected WMA9 at 128kbps.

DRM Restrictions

You can play on up to three computers, but it's unclear how those computers are defined. I don't know for sure if you can "deregister" a computer in case you sell it/upgrade or not. Burns to CD and exporting to the Samsung Napster branded player are unlimited.

I would imagine exporting to the WMA9 compatible players is also unlimited, but that's unclear. The Napster docs say you must use Media Player 9 to export to those players.

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