Blogcritics: Comments on Napster offers free portable player with 1 year service

Comment by RC

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 19:25:57 EDT

Is napster still offfering this?

Comment by Dave

Thu, 17 Jun 2004 22:34:42 EDT

Well, encouraged by your reply I figured I'd take another look: a search for "bruford" brings up no Bill Bruford, but plenty of Barbra Mandrell and Barbra Streisand selections from which to choose. They have nothing by Anthony Phillips. A search for "rypdal" brings up nothing by Terje Rypdal, but offers "Nordics vs. Reptilians", so at least they're getting the country right this time. A search for "towner" brings up no Ralph Towner. Amazingly, a search for "zappa" brings up a few albums that appear at first glance to be complete or mostly complete albums, though only a few. They carry Miles Davis' "Complete Jack Johnson" but are missing 6 of the 42 tracks. It's not as bad as it was the last time I looked at it.

Comment by TDavid

Thu, 17 Jun 2004 15:32:04 EDT

In the beginning it was that way, Dave, but it has gotten better. You didn't mention any specific artists so not sure what type music you were searching for. Clearly some types of music their selection is not as good as others. As I said in the piece, Rhapsody still has a superior selection, but only Napster allows local downloading and portable sharing (if you have the right device with Janus technology) without requiring subscribers to buy the tracks at 99 cents a piece. Rhapsody and iTunes don't allow that. Also, Napster still has that annoying "buy only" option which I spoke in depth about in the original review last October.

Comment by Dave

Thu, 17 Jun 2004 15:24:10 EDT

I've looked at Napster a few times since they reappeared. It took me several queries before I found anything I might possibly want, and even then I couldn't find all the tracks of the albums I was interested in. It seems that their catalog might be targeting Debbie the 14 year old girl.