Napster To Go: Review and Features Guide
posted Mar 25th 2005 1:25PM
The Napster To Go service launched officially last month to ignite a flurry of "rent versus own" debates concerning the digital music market. We spent some time with the service recently to check out first-hand what Napster To Go has to offer, and to decide whether or not the subscription music model might find success in the marketplace. In this article we'll report our trials and tribulations during the setup process, go over the notable features, and wrap up with some thoughts on the value of the subscription model as implemented by Napster To Go.
Set up
Napster To Go compatible playersFirstly, you'll need to make sure your Napster To Go compatible player is actually ready to go. We first tried the service with a Creative Zen Micro player, only to find out the device wasn't compatible without a firmware upgrade. However, the only compatible firmware was in beta and laden with warnings of possible instability and malfunction — not the most welcome information for someone who's just plunked down hard-earned money for a player. As it turned out, the firmware upgrade we performed ended up crashing in the middle of the process, after which the player was unrecognizeable by either the Creative software, the operating system, or any version of the firmware updater we threw at it. The Creative support site was about as helpful as if we'd called up the local hardware store to ask for advice, and it was a Saturday so no live phone support (60 days of which came included with the player). Instead of waiting around until Monday we opted to return the unit and give the iRiver H10 a shot instead.
The iRiver H10 was recognized by Napster to Go right off the bat with no need for a firmware upgrade. However, after setting up the software and spending time downloading a whole bunch of tracks, we discovered something very annoying — they wouldn't play. The playhead would just sit at 00:00 for about 10 seconds or so, then advance to the next track, only to keep repeating the process. The MP3 files we had uploaded to the player from our own collection worked fine, but none of the WMA files downloaded from Napster To Go would play on the device.
Not surprisingly, we found no helpful information on the iRiver site. A Google search led us to some CNet reviews from folks who had had the same experience, but no solution. Further Googling led us to some obscure message board threads that advised completely reformatting the player to fix the non-playing problem with Napster To Go. We then had to find some other obscure message board thread to describe exactly how to reformat the player — after which, playing Napster To Go tracks finally worked (we had to re-transfer all of the music files after the reformat, of course). So, if you're trying to use Napster to Go with the iRiver H10, and you're seeing the same problem, check out this thread and follow the second set of instructions (there are two on the page) to reformat your player, then re-transfer your NTG files and try again.
Yes, it was really that kludgy. But a full day and two players later, we were finally up and running with Napster To Go.
Napster softwareAfter you install the software you'll have a 14-day trial period to try it out. The first thing you'll need to decide is how to manage your music library. You've got two choices: Manual, or Automatic. With the former, you drag and drop songs and playlists as desired. The latter will sync your Napster library with your player every time you connect it to your PC. You'll probably want to avoid the latter if you plan to use the service on more than one computer (home and work, e.g.), if you plan on having more music in your library than the available space on your player, or if you plan to import a large library of music you already own for management via NTG (you can use NTG as a central media management server by importing already ripped or downloaded tracks from your PC, which can be pretty handy in and of itself). We chose the manual method so we could pull in tracks by hand from several different machines.
Using Napster To Go on multiple machines didn't end up being as difficult as we actually expected. The only thing to be aware of is that you'll be asked to make a new "Device Partnership" each time you connect to a different machine, and make the Manual/Automatic choice again. Also, the playlists you have on the device will be cleared, although the tracks themselves will not be removed. To get the playlists back, you'll have to re-sync them. This could be pretty annoying for some, if you've meticulously set up playlists you want to have at all times. It wasn't annoying to us because it was superceded by the even more annoying fact that the iRiver H10 plays everything alphabetically, anyway (albums, playlists, artist track lists), so we never even bothered making playlists on it.
The biggest drawback to the Napster software was that it was prone to crashing, and not infrequently. After a few hours of usage, the software would either completely crash, or transfers to the player would stall in the middle. How much of the bugginess was a result of the interaction with the iRiver H10 in particular is hard to say, since we never did get the Creative Zen Micro to work with the software for comparison. Sometimes there would be a dialogue box thrown up to say "the player has stopped responding," while other times the "transfer to device" pane would just stop incrementing the percentage transferred. Disconnecting the player and restarting the software would fix the problem, but it was annoyingly too frequent, on each of the three machines we were using it on.
Features walk-through
InterfaceWe found the interface attractive and easy to use. The software is far more feature-rich than the iTunes Music Store. There are numerous pathways available for finding new music, some of which we'll detail below. Overall, we had absolutely no trouble finding our way around and figuring out what was what.
SelectionWith over one million tracks and counting, there's plenty to explore. The biggest issue here is the relative lack of independent artist representation. Whereas the iTunes Music Store licenses tracks from indie clearinghouses such as CDBaby.com, Napster prefers to work with signed artists on established labels. There are a number of smaller, independent labels included in the catalogue, but there is a clear preference for the majors, and we'd love to see that change in the future.
It wasn't unusual to run across occasional "Buy Only" tracks, but it didn't really seem too overwhelming. Most artists had at least some subset of music available for download/transfer to portable devices (hint: if an album or playlist has a mixture of downloadable and buy only tracks, click on the "Download" header to sort by downloadability, making it easier to select and drag just those tracks that are portable).
Ease of finding new musicThe Napster service offers a ridiculous number of ways to find new music. Only the Playlists to Go feature is unique to the Napster To Go service in particular, but pretty much any method you can find to load up a playlist can be used to fill your portable audio player. Once songs are listed in a playlist, all you have to do is select them (use CTRL-a to select all tracks in a playlist) and drag and drop them into the "transfer to device" pane at the lower right of the interface. Even Napster "radio" can be used in this way — just "play" a radio station to create a playlist, then select all the tracks and drop them on to your player. In browse mode, you don't have to create playlists to transfer tracks — just select the songs from the album's track listing and drag and drop those to the "transfer to device" pane.
Here's an overview of some of the methods you can use to find new music to take with you:
- Search by artist, album, track, Napster member, or within your own library
- Browse by genre or subgenre
- Browse top artists
- Browse recently added tracks
- Browse Billboard charts by season, going all the way back to 1955 (optionally broken down by genre)
- Browse Napster charts of top downloads, top streams, top artists and top albums (optionally broken down by genre)
- Browse what other members are streaming right now (optionally broken down by genre or subgenre)
- Browse other members' music collections
- Send and receive music recommendations from friends via email, or via "bookmarking" another user's library
- Browse from the Home page
- Surf from genre pages
- Surf new releases
- Prepared CD compilations (which can be taken to go by first creating a playlist)
- Playlists to Go
- Pre-programmed "radio" stations (can be taken to go by creating playlists)
- Create a custom radio station based on your entire existing music library
- Build a custom radio station based on three or more tracks of your choice
What really makes the Napster service shine is the added value provided by the album reviews, artist biographies, sections on music history and specially created features like the "ffwd" new music spotlights and "foundation" genre overviews. Other special features include the Napster Live section, where artists have recorded tracks specifically for the Napster online audience, the Tribute feature showcasing the careers of landmark artists, and the artist blogs feature (which they call "blahgs" for some reason). This is what makes the difference between Napster being just a place to download tracks, and being a full on musical, historical, and cultural experience. We enjoyed spending time on the site (though it's not really a site, per se), reading reviews, learning about new genres, and being able to tap into the immediacy of hearing what we were reading about right away. There's a big difference between being limited to a 30 second clip, and being able to drop in a 2-hour playlist of full tracks because you've decided on a whim to explore jazz.
The subscription model
The subscription music model isn't going to be for everybody. If you absolutely must own every single piece of music you ever listen to, then Napster To Go is not for you. Likewise, if you only care to hear music you already know about and like, you're better off elsewhere. But the NTG model is extremely attractive to folks like early adopters and heavy music fans, who have an insatiable need to be exposed to new artists. It will also be of use to anyone seeking to broaden their musical tastes by getting relatively inexpensive access to entirely new genres and artists. All of which can live happily side by side with the pay-per download model. Sometimes you want the buffet, and other times you just know what you want. It's all good.
Thinking of the Napster To Go model as "renting music" is short-sighted. What you're really paying for is the complete service of being able to centrally store and organize your music collection online, where it is accessible from anywhere you can access a Windows PC, as well as all of the embedded features available to help you find new music in a way that's personalized to your tastes. Some people prefer to maintain their own digital music collection entirely locally, but there's enough of a time and materials cost in that process such that there will be plenty of folks who will gladly pay someone else $15 a month to host and manage not only their current collection, but their future collection as they access it through the service — as well as the management layer on top of the whole works. Store your collection locally and it's only available locally (though a crop of services such as Orb Networks aims to change that). If your collection lives on Napster's servers, it's more easily available to you wherever you are. The Napster To Go service fills the gap by porting your collection to your portable device, obviating the need to be near a PC for access. If Napster were smart, they'd already be trying to get in on the musicphone action as we speak, to create the truly seamless "celestial jukebox" experience as envisioned. Music is moving away from being based in a physical medium that itself must be owned. Music no longer need be seen as an object, when it can more accurately be described as an experience. The iTunes pay-per-download model is still an object model. The Napster To Go model is an experience model, and some people are really going to dig that.
Overall review
It took a bit of elbow grease to get everything working, and the software of both Napster and the players used proved a bit buggy and prone to not infrequent crashes. Despite this, once we got it working, we found Napster To Go to be a great service. The "buffet" music model is not going to please everyone — there is still a clear market of people who truly want to own all of the music they spend money on. But there's no reason the two models can't co-exist, as music lovers and early adopters will find a great deal of value in the portable subscription model.
Our major concern is that, if our setup experience is at all typical, it could seriously turn off potential users of the service. We just could not say we had an easy time getting Napster To Go working with two out of the three players Napster is strongly promoting as the optimal devices for use with the service — and we're geeks. We can only imagine the average user might give up long before we did, and wander over to some other service they might have heard about. Hopefully we just got really unlucky (twice...), and hopefully Napster is going to be able to get some more compatible players online ASAP, because it would be a shame if the kind of bugginess we experienced were the dealbreaker that prevented people from signing on to what is a reasonably priced and fun service for finding new music you'll actually like, keeping it all organized, and taking it with you wherever you may roam.
Call me crazy but will this service work with a flash or memory stick player, so the music can really be "to go"? It would seem that if you could dump your music onto one of those then you wouldn't really need to rip it.. am I crazy?
I think it's clear that there is value in a subscription model in concert with a pay-per-track type model and so I hope Apple adds a subscription service to iTMS. I don't even need the "ToGo" part of it. I'd just want the ability to play full tracks as much as I wanted on my computer to facilitate discovery. If Napster had substantial Indie coverage I'd try them for this purpose, but that's moot both because they don't have Indie and because Napster doesn't work on the Mac.
I still wouldn't buy much from iTMS because the sound quality isn't high enough for my tastes, instead I'd buy CDs of music I liked to rip in my format of choice, but I'd eat up a subscription service - there's tons of Indie and other music to discover in iTMS and 30 second previews just don't cut it. I keep hoping they'll announce that they've switched to 128 kbps AAC+ format, but who knows if we'll ever see that....
In regards to the review: "Thinking of the Napster To Go model as renting music is short-sighted."
Possibly, and to be fair, the service does offer much more than just the ability to sample music. However, and this is the "gotcha" of the entire concept, everything available through Napster is predicated on the subscriber paying a continuous ransom. Life has a way of interrupting even the best of plans and intentions and, at some future date when you decide not to pay anymore, you're left with megabytes of empty space--NoTunes.
There are those that will welcome a service allowing an unlimited trial of music. However, music is different than books or movies (which can be rented/checked out); music is something a lot of us like to hear over and over.
I don't think "the Napster To Go model as 'renting music' is short-sighted," comment should be carelessly thrown aside, as being the lesser of considerations. No matter what, once the currency flow is interrupted, all Napster services become moot and mute.
In regards to the review: "Thinking of the Napster To Go model as renting music is short-sighted."
Possibly, and to be fair, the service does offer much more than just the ability to sample music. However, and this is the "gotcha" of the entire concept, everything available through Napster is predicated on the subscriber paying a continuous ransom. Life has a way of interrupting even the best of plans and intentions and, at some future date when you decide not to pay anymore, you're left with megabytes of empty space--NoTunes.
There are those that will welcome a service allowing an unlimited trial of music. However, music is different than books or movies (which can be rented/checked out); music is something a lot of us like to hear over and over.
I don't think "the Napster To Go model as 'renting music' is short-sighted," comment should be carelessly thrown aside, as being the lesser of considerations. No matter what, once the currency flow is interrupted, all Napster services become moot and mute.
I use NTG, I have read the review and the comments, and thus, have a couple of my own.
1. I have an H10 (listening to it right now). It really is great. HD plus FM tuner plus support of latest DRM is a nice combo. I did experience some of the "00:00 issues" but I just reloaded the music and it worked well. I really think the firmware may just need an update. Obivously its the DRM10 that makes things difficult. I've not had a problem with other music.
2. I have only seen NTG be alittle buggy when tranfering many files at once files. Again, I believe its due to the DRM. Normal files give me no trouble at all.
3. You can still buy the tracks from Napster if you want to own them. Maybe you just write off the $15/month for the easy of hearing the whole song, rather than the first 30 secs.
4. There definitely are hurtles to easy usage of NTG, but if you are reading (and commenting on) Engadget, chances are, you are an eary adopter. It wouldn't be the first time you had to pay for the new hotness that required a few workarounds.
5. Although its true that when you stop paying for NTG, you can't listen anymore, but don't you think you are going to spend at least $15 a month or more on CDs or downloads anyways? Why not has an enormous, continously updating library to choose from?
6. If you are a music fan who appreciates all types and wants to hear new stuff, this is your place.
I have read the story and all the commments. I agree with some, dont agree with others
First, The format sucks.. if I get a choice on format(NO WMA!!!) I would think more
Second, I dont own a windows computer and I never plain on owning another one. That leaves 2 things, Napster Get a Mac version out and iTunes get a subscription out. (I know i spend 15 a month, I know I always will - by the way, ever heard of the hack????- i am not goin to pay 15 for 20 and have them go out of business and all my music gone.. keep it.. i would have payed for it by then)
iPod, best hting ever - got 2. that says, keep the hack open. get napster on the mac, or itunes, get a subscription out for $13(beat the competition) and then I will be happy...
Get the bugs out of the software Napster(i started Napster right when it came out 2.0 - quit a year later..... the players they had just sucked)
Some like your software, I find it difficult to use, (take some pointers from the Keynote d00ds)
I'm curious how NTG prevents the songs from being played on your MP3 player after they have been transferred if you don't pay your subscription fee. I assume there is a way using the DRM, but how does your MP3 player know if you have stopped paying? Do you have to plug it in every so often or what?
zach,
i have no idea what (if anything) you are trying to communicate by that post. after the first 2 sentences it's just a bunch of fragmented thoughts jumbled together .
I thought that the whole windows world was about CHOICE and the iTunes world was all locked down...
So I am in New Zealand and with iTunes at least I can browse the store and hear previews and go out and buy a CD.
On the CHOICE side, all I get is a message from WMP saying there are no music stores in my country (so go away).
The same if I download the Napster software, it just tells me sorry I am not even allowed to look inside....
Great, this makes me so happy that I have so much choice using windows...
Jason (#24) - yes, I believe you need to connect your player up once a month to reactivate it (I am not a NTG user, just Napster).
Another +ve aspect of Napster that is understated is that one account can be used on 3 machines at a time. That means, with the same account I use Napster on my home machine and work machine and my wife gets to use it on her laptop as well. Overall, I'd say the quality of the audio is pretty good as online music purchases go. I just don't get the fact that there are so many complaints about not owning your music. For me, the service is just so convenient that its worth it just for that and to be able to discover new music. For $10 a month, I can listen to all the music I want on 3 different machines without having to rip my cds and make sure the titles are correct and album art is present etc. I have 400 + cds and I stopped ripping them because I don't need to anymore, I can find most of them on Napster and downloading them is way faster and saves me lot of time. Add $5 a month and you can use upto 3 DAPs with your account too..
Because the claim that hard core music lovers would love this and Napster's absurd math claims, I'd love any and all Napster reviews to include the process of transferring large numbers of tracks on and off the device, in and out of your online "collection." How long does it take to select 10,000 songs? to clean that 10,000 up from bad songs? To remove those 10,000 songs and select another 10,000? To remove those 10,000 songs and select another 10,000?
As someone said, it's a great way to sample music, but beyond that, I don't want to pay forever for my music. (I own about 800 CDs and listen to 80% of them a lot, and plan to keep on listening to the same albums for the rest of my life. What do I care if I can hear the newest Fabolous track when I'm paying $15 every month for the rest of my life for albums like "Bitch's Brew"?) If I were Apple and I eventually offered a subscription model, I would undercut Napster but restrict the tracks, say $3 for 300 songs a month. A smaller subscription would kill Napster and keep the idea of owning music strong and satisfy any curiosity, sampling I may want to do.
Arvind, the iTMS works with 5 PCs and an UNLIMITED number of iPods.
Arvind:
You will get it when Napster goes out of business and you're out both your money *and* the time you've now gotta put in ripping your 400 CD's.
I think it's pretty obvious that humans like to collect things. We are collectors; it's how we, as humans, survived all these years. We hoard. When we were all cave-people, we hoarded food and wood. We no longer have the need to do that, but we still have the instinct, so instead we collect salt and pepper shakers, or bobbleheads, or in my case, old video game machines. Almost all of us have photo collections and movie collections and music collections. It's the way we are.
So what Napster is asking us to do is basically to pay them to host our music collections - I mean that's the *best* way you can put it, if you don't want to call it a "rental" service. And I think most people just do not trust some random external corporation to host a personal collection of anything (nor should they), which can be rendered useless in an instant at the whim of that company. I mean I have a lot of my photos on Ofoto, but I also have them on my hard drive and those photos will still be on my hard drive and will still work if Kodak one day decides to pull the plug. Not so with Napster.
I think we've all seen how quickly companies come and go in the internet age, and even if a company does manage to stick it out, there's no guarantee their business model will stay the same. What if Napster decides one day to jack up the price to $30 a month? Or $50 a month? What are you going to do, now that you've been paying $15 a month for 3 years and you have no other music as a backup? Are you going to cancel your subscription and buy that music all over again somewhere else, or are you going to let them gouge you?
No thanks. I think it's pretty likely given their cash burn rate that Napster's not even going to be around more than a year or two, but even if they are, I don't trust their business model for a second. They're a for-profit company, and you think they're not going to leverage their customers as much as possible? The more successful they are, the worse off their customers will be - the harder it will be to cancel your subscription (lest you lose all your music), and the higher the prices you'll be paying.
Yes, I know you can still "buy" your music from Napster, but 128k WMA files? No friggin' way, man. Plus, how many people will actually do that if they think they can just listen to a song as much as they want without buying it until they get sick of it?
They'll regret it eventually, though. Napster's a modern-day crack dealer, that's all. They get you hooked on low-quality crap, then eventually they either jack the price up or they get sent up the river and leave you high and dry, strung out in the corner, muttering to yourself in anger and pain.
(btw, *some* of what I'm saying applies to iTunes as well, which is why I just buy CD's and rip them.)
I've been using Napster and NTG within Windows Media Player 10, rather than with the standalone client. Using it this way can be slow and CPU-hungry at times, but overall it works -- I haven't experienced any crashes.
One DAP that has been trouble-free for me with NTG is not actually a dedicated audio player -- it's my Audiovox SMT 5600 phone. The phone is (comically) listed at playsforsure.com as a 32MB device, but in reality it works with whatever space you have free on the miniSD card currently in the phone. I've had some DRM troubles with MSN Music purchased tracks on the phone (usually cured with a quick ActiveSync), but never with Napster or NTG tracks. The sound quality is workable if not exactly audiophile-quality (no EQ), but there's a huge plus: you get to see album art on the phone's screen while tracks play.
NTG also works with my Roku home network music player (or whatever you would call that product category).
I must say that I thought about Napster2Go when the WinAmp exploit was made public, but what stopped me was the fact that Napster's music is encoded in WMA, and I don't like that format at all. To me, WMA derived music sounds "tinny" at the same bitrates as all the other formats. I concede that the iTunes Music Store's AAC format isn't the best out there (bit for bit), but its close enough to OGG for my tastes and of course its "compatible" with my iPod. So there you have it...to me, Napster2Go (because of sound quality) wasn't even good enough to rip-off...
Jeff (#30):
I accept a lot of what you say. Mostly about ownership, you never really own the rights to songs purchased from iTunes either. Apple can modify those rights anytime they feel like it - you just expect that they will not. I too, buy my CDs when I want to 'own' my music. But with NTG, I don't buy as many CDs.. only the ones I really like - I use them in car, my home theater when I feel like it. For day to day listening on the go, in office etc, I like NTG and I just feel its a decent app / service for that.
I disagree with your view on being held hostage by Napster. I make the assumption that the subscription model is here to stay, Napster or no Napster, no point in adopting otherwise. With a WMA-based subscription model, you are not tied into the service or the hardware. You can switch either at any time. Of course, switching your service means that you need to download all your tracks and create your playlists all over, but you really wouldn't switch unless your service died or they hiked up the price where it was not feasible for you. If the subscription model stays alive, I'm betting there will be other services competing with Napster and because of that they wouldn't be able to hike prices up and hold you hostage - you could take your WMA-based player and just switch to another service!
NTG is not the only music service for me - it has a place in my life but it could very well be the only music source for a lot of people - casual listeners, mostly.
I've been using NTG for a few weeks now and I love it. I had no problem upgrading the firmware on my Creative Zen Micro. I've been using Windows Media Player rather than the Napster player to keep my Zen Micro up to date. I create my playlists in WMP, and select the option for WMP to automatically synch those playlists with my Zen Micro.
The Standalone Napster player and Windows Media Player both worked great for playing files downloaded from Napster, but I recommend avoiding the "Napster for Windows Media Player" plugin to WMP. When I tried to use it, it hung WMP, and I could not use WMP and the standalone Napster player simultaneously. As soon as I uninstalled "Napster for Windows Media Player", both WMP and the standalone Napster player worked fine again.
The Best things about Napster:
1. It's like having immediate access to all the CDs in a record store - Great Selection
2. There's no long term commitment. In a few months, I may decide that, OK, I've discovered some great artists on Napster. Now I'm going to cancel my Napster subscription and go buy the albums that I really liked the most. Or, maybe I'll just keep listening to Napster.
3. I feel good knowing that I'm listening to and downloading music the honest way, and supporting the artists whose work I admire.
The worst things about Napster:
1. It's like having access to all the CDs in a single record store - They will have at least a few albums by your favorite artist, but probably not all of them.
2. They seem to be most strongly targeted at the college-aged crowd, and not as much at the forty-somethings like myself. I know, our generation stopped bying lots of CDs a decade or two ago, but this is just the type of service that might get us interested in buying music again. More radio stations and playlists targeting different age groups would be nice. I didn't see as much young-children's music as I would have liked.
Do you really have to *download* songs with Napster? I am a huge fan of Rhapsody and I just load up the app on any computer (PC) I choose (unlimited as far as I know) and I can stream music over a live internet connection. With a streaming model, there really isn't any cost to switching services (and therefore, no lock-in of customers) beyond having to remake playlists that are hosted on their server. With streaming, I was never under any illusion that I was either buying or renting music... it's just a on-demand web radio service with access to the entire human race's music collection (exaggeration, of course). Personally, I think it's a great value proposition. And N2Go really does add value with the ability to transfer a personalized radiostation super-playlist to a portable device, although I would worry that it might take a very long time to sync a 200-song playlist.
I've had zero problems upgrading my zen micro's firmware, and I've done it several times. The latest update didn't even wipe out all the music on my player. Bonus!
On the NTG tip, I've found a lot of music that I like and more importantly a lot of music that I haven't liked, so that makes it worth it to me. If Napster goes poof in a few years, I won't cry, I'll go buy the CDs of what I really liked. It doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Will it be inconvenient? Sure. But the insant gratification of using the service right now is worth it to me. $15/month really isn't all that much to me.
Ah but napster has its pitfalls: Sad interface that makes navigating large libraries absolutely tedious (same goes for WMP). Some albums only have a few songs, some albums listed have no songs! Some albums have purchase-only songs. And the ID3 tagging is so awfully inconsistent that you'll rip your hair out if you're a tagging nut who likes an organized library. Transfers to my Zen are monumentally slow. We're talking 15 tracks in 5 minutes slow. This is the DRM's fault I think because non-DRMd tracks transfer much faster. I haven't had too many crashing problems, but it's far from bugless or rock-solid. So it's kind of a battle to use, but once the tunes are on the DAP, all's good. Sound quality could be better, but not much sounds great at 128K. Price you pay I guess.
#36: No, you do not have to download tracks to listen to them. You can stream everything if you want. But if you want to listen offline or on a portable music player, then you have to download tracks.
I had a similar problem with my iRiver H320: it would just pause on a file for 10 seconds, then move to the next file. I called iRiver and their tech support was great. All I had to do was set the date and time on my device. The subscription service is based on date and time (but of course) :P
NTG is working really well for me too. Yes I know there are people there who listen to the same tracks all the time or have some urge to own their music, but I don't believe they are the majority. The majority probably have music tastes that at change slightly at the very least, enjoy listening to new songs, and saving money.
To the reviewer(s) - have you tried removing the Micro's battery then replacing it WHILE holding the power switch. This should bring you to recovery mode.
Ref: Commment #24:
"There definitely are hurtles to easy usage of NTG"
Hurtles? Is that hurdles that really hurt? Well, it is now!
i have a 1 year subscription of NTG (ebay). I luv mine.
I dont know if anyone mentioned this yet but 1 nice thing napster offers is napsterlive which are private live recordings of songs.
I don't understand the complaints about not 'owning' the music, or if Napster goes under they are taking 'your' music with them. You aren't buying the music, so its not yours to lose.
Basically, you are paying $15 a month to have unlimited access to thousands of CDs. You can listen to them anytime you want starting from day one.
On the contrary, if each month you spend $15 for a new CD, or purchased the tracks online (assuming 15 tracks / $.99 - a ripoff of enormous proportions) then for January, you have one CD to listen to, over and over and over. February, you have 2 CDs, but you are likely tired of the first one already... etc.
In either scenario, at the end of 12 Months you've spent $180. And what do you have to show for it? Either you have 12 CDs that you listened so many times in the last twelve months you can't stand to look at them (or not, exaggerating here) or you had 365 days of listening to an enormously diverse selection of music.
Let's stretch it out over 10 years. Many people have more than 120 CDs. But thats exactly what you would have for the same price if you subscribed to Napster for 10 YEARS!! Can you pick 120 CDs that you want to listen to for the next 10 years? And only those CDS?? Or better yet, you have to pick only one CD each month. So in 5 years, you will have only 60....
Technical issues aside, I don't think you can compare the value, really. It's no contest.
Hey,
This sounds like a good service but do you get to keep the music on your mp3 player because how would it be voided?? I understand that once the subscription is over, all the music on the computer is taken away but is the music on the mp3 player deleted also? This is the only thing i'm not clear on.
re: #45
The music isn't deleted from your computer or your MP3 player. It will remain on there even after the subscription has expired. When your subscription expires, you won't be able to renew the license on the WMA files. Your player knows how long the songs are good for and won't play them unless you connect to the Napster server again to reset the dates of the files. NapsterToGo has been working great for me, especially on my free MP3 player..
http://www.mp3players4free.com/default.aspx?r=369284
I love it but we need more mp3 players and my PSP! I dubt sony will let them use it though
What's funny to me is the people with iPods that think that it's Napster's fault for not being compatible. Unfortunatly, iPod will never be compatible with anything except for iTunes, because of the way Apple's business model is setup. THEY are closed.
Napster helped start, along with Windows the Playforsure "open" model... so that any player and service company can create a product around the new industry standard.
iPod will never conform to anyone but Apple. And that's fine, but it won't work for users long-term when all new services (that will eventually get better and better) will never work on their precious iPod. People will be forced to migrate in order to have access to better products.
itunes sux, it and the ipod,people have low expectations!
I'm in the early stages of planning my wedding and one of the first things my fianc?and I need to do is schedule a DJ. Although a music rental program wouldn't work for me. I wonder if DJs could take advantage of such a program.
In addition to their yearly fee to the RIAA, which gives them the right to allow other people to listen to the music they own, this seems like the perfect choice for them. Much cheaper than buying tons and tons of CDs for their business. Or for that matter this seems perfect for other businesses that use music: i.e. bars with mp3 player jukeboxes.
Does anyone know if DJs and the like can legally use Napster2Go in their business model?
I had it, and I liked it a lot - before they broke the ability to work around the DRM and make MP3s for my iPod. So I cancelled the service, and it's another flash in the pan. Too bad.
Wonder if they realize how many subscribers they could get AND keep, just by having plead ignorance to the whole DRM workaround thing. If a consumer wants to steal something, they will - but at leaset before there was SOME profit being made. :P
Fed up with Musicmatch's slow performance, frequent crashes, and perpetually ugly design, I was all to eager to try the "new" Napster. Needless to say, I like it much better. I have already discovered a TON of new music I never would have heard otherwise. Plus, Napster's radio stations and canned playlists are great perks. Overall, it impresses me as a much more refined, versatile service. And you can pay with PayPal!
I like the idea of renting music, but getting to the point where it actually works sounds pretty painful w/ Napster. While the service/software does sound feature rich, I'd rather have it simple and work rather than feature rich and crashy...
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I need to not only own the music I'm listening to but also I have to own the physical media. I really enjoy pulling out the CD jacket and looking at the lyrics and artwork. Some of these can not really be easily represented as an online image. And I want to see all my CDs organized on my CD rack in order.
It brings order and peace to my life ok?!
The H10 is by far the coolest N2Go player currently available. However, the software is complete ish. After taking back two H10's, I have now settles on the Creative Zen Micro.
Although I still have trouble creating playlists for the device, I am addicted to N2Go.
Well, it seems that the whole premise is that Napster crashes a lot, doesn't poorly with at least two players, people will be forced to go through flaming hoops blindfolded to make it work, but other than that, you get to discover a lot of new, low-quality music that you'll have to keep paying for. And why the hell didn't Engadget cover that little part where your music stops working because you didn't renew your subscription?
I think that the rental model is a good idea, but I think that people's arguments that we rent movies, games, and TV is false. We either see the media once, or give it back. Not so with music. Unless you are a hardcore public-library CD borrower, I don't think that the crowd Napster is trying to target will take to well to this model.
But, in conclusion, no thanks.
well, now I know why they don't offer a mac version. Forget wma drm, its because they can't even get a stable version working on windows...
Why in the world would anyone want a program that crashes all the time? And pay to use it? Who cares if it has all the features you could ever want, if it doesn't work. Eh, sounds like the cell phone providers... offer a million new features, but good luck having your cell phone work well as a... phone.
n.b. I'm no Luddite, but, call me crazy, I like things to actually work as advertised. And reliably.
Nice. Well-balanced, and a clear description of the problems you ran into getting the service running. Three observations:
1. You don't talk about the relative experience of using the music on the NTG-compatible players, other than that alphabetical play comment. I find my iPod to be superior ergonomically and in terms of features (the Contacts feature has paid for the iPod three times). I realize other reviews have talked iPod vs Contender ergonomics to death, so that might have been intentional, but it leaves the impression that you feel the iRiver user interface was comparable to the iPod user interface.
2. You don't talk about the ease of management for the local jukebox software. I like iTunes a lot, and when I did a more complete evaluation, found the other jukebox programs to be clumsy and sometimes plain ugly in comparison. I appreciate your in-depth discussion of the online store experience - that's very useful - but it's not the same as the interface that I'd be looking at most of the time.
I'm glad that you point out the playlist issue, but I think you understate its importance. I have a 45GB music library with thousands and thousands of songs. I have meticulously-managed playlists in iTunes (its Smart Playlists are fantastic for mass organization and filtering). I have five separate playlists that I synchronize to my iPod Shuffle, for example, depending on what I'm going to be doing with it.
Playlists are the only way you can properly manage a large music library - browsing through my artist or album list can take a long time.
3. The fact that iTunes will automatically downsample music for the Shuffle is *huge* - I'm guessing that there's no similar feature in the NTG jukebox?
is it me, or does it sound like the real problems here are implementation issues in device firmware, not on napster's side of things?
"n.b. I'm no Luddite, but, call me crazy, I like things to actually work as advertised. And reliably. "
I'm with ya, man, but I'm actually willing to cut Napster a little slack in this area. Was this crashing replicated on multiple machines? The article doesn't specifically say - it does imply it, but rather than assuming, I'd like to see an unequivocal "the app crashed on every machine we tested it on". As for the communication problems with the music players, in all honesty my iPod (no, not a Napster player, but it still applies here) just plain will not work over USB 2.0 with one of my machines, but it works fine on my other three. Every other USB device I have works perfectly on that one machine, but the iPod practically ejects itself across the room if I try to plug it in. I've actually had to reformat the thing three times after trying to get it to work with USB on that one machine. (I now just use firewire, which is fine.)
This is the wild west of PC hardware. Even machines that seem exactly alike and work just fine most of the time may be flaky in one area or another. Crashing apps often have less to do with the app than with a) Windows, or b) some obscure piece of hardware that's either not up to snuff or just plain not quite compatible. Communication problems may have as much to do with the ports on the machine as the player or app. You really just never know.
That said, I like the new music finding features of Napster but I doubt I will ever use it (even ignoring the fact that WMA sucks). I will never "rent" music, whether you want to call it "renting" or an "experience model" or whatever. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
I like the /idea/ of Napster To Go - BUT - without support for the iPod hardware, there's just no way I'll use it. All of the other players I've seen simply don't compare to the iPod's superb interface, small size, and fast, seamless synchronization.
There are some things I like about Napster (I have no need for NTG as my MP3 player of choice is the iPod), but my biggest gripe is the terrible sound quality. To my ears, it sounds like a 112k MP3 encoded 5-7 years ago, or a 128k MP3 that was re-encoded from a 96k MP3... Everytime I start listening I throw up a little bit in my mouth, and can't listen for extended periods of time because it drives me insane. It's alright for previewing full albums (just yesterday I decided I didn't want the new Queens of the Stone Age album because I gave it a listen through on Napster), but terrible for just about anything else...
I love the Napster service but don't dig any of the compatible players. I love the iPod but iTunes doesn't offer a subscription service. As a result, I have been using my ol' MiniDisc recorder to record tunes from Napster overnight and listen to them on the move. The quality is great (I use optical audio out to record) and my friends with MD players can borrow my discs too. The only hard part is splitting the tracks and titling them.
As a concept, the subscription model is interesting, but with the lack of iPod compatibility and with Napster bleeding money the way it is, how long will it be until subscriber's are left holding the bag? I suspect if the 800 pound gorilla embraces the subscription model, it will be a success, but until that happens, I'd be worried about my "collection". Yes, I own an iPod, and 90% of the music stored on it came from my collection of over 500 CDs.
This review is a great advert for the whole iTunes Music Store experience.
--
dp
I hear some people telling others to cut Napster2Go some slack... the thing is, is you cant give them any slack.
iTunes Music Store (iTMS) works so perfectly and has so few bugs (I have never found any) or problems that you cannot allow another paid app to be buggy.
Napster has a bar to reach, that bar is iTMS's reliability and quality. If their software is buggy, they can go the hell away till its fixed.
I have installed iTunes on many different machines, as have my close friends, NONE of them have had any issues at all. This is the standard that Napster needs to get to before they can take people's money.
Having beta firmware for an advertised compatible player just stinks of typical bull-hokey me-too service, which does not give a rats ass about customers quality buying experience.
I browsed through the features that you listed so efficiently and thoroughly, and I was wondering which features are NOT a part of iTunes? iTunes has Billboard charts, Artist playlists, premade "theme" lists, excellent search features, music videos, etc, etc... Which of those listed above does iTunes NOT have?