05-04-2006

Napster Trying a Novel Idea—Free Music!

Yahoo! News has an article about Napster’s move to once again offer free music—only this time it’s legal.

In launching a new ad-supported service, Napster “becomes the first legal digital music service to offer music fans free, on-demand listening to over two million major and independent-label tracks,” according to a company statement Monday.

The catch is that users will be able to listen to songs only five times before being prompted to pay 99 cents for a download or about 10 dollars a month for a subscription. The free songs are in a “streaming” format that cannot be copied or downloaded to another device.

In a similar vein, just yesterday I signed up for a free trial of eMusic. The files are standard MP3s that can be played on just about any computer or portable music player, they’re DRM free, and beyond the trial tracks they’re $.25 or less. I’ve known about the service for a long time, but reading some good word-of-mouth via Ask MetaFilter was what made me give it a try.

Add in recording online radio, downloading podcasts, listening to Pandora and I now have access to far more music that I can get around to listening to.

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Posted by Matt in music, tech | RSS 2.0

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