Napster versus iTunes

No Ordinary Monkey | !!! After Party. Photo by Lightwerk.

I’ve been trying out Napster recently. I like iTunes particularly being able to buy stuff you simply can’t get in the shops. But I struggle with the 79p download charge. Particularly when the Canadian iTunes sells tracks for 99c (under 49p). Apple claim it’s to do with economies of scale etc, but I cannot believe the UK is 40% harder to sell to than Canada. I also get a little annoyed with only being able to play the tunes on the computer or burn to CD. Why can’t I play them on a non-Apple MP3 player? Security? So long as it doesn’t occur to me to burn to CD and then re-convert to MP3 then I suppose that works.

Napster takes a different approach. I don’t own tracks at all with Napster, unless I buy them for 79p. What I do is subscribe to Napster on a monthly basis and get unlimited downloads. The downloads will fail to play if don’t keep up the subscription and I can’t burn to CD. They also have a limited range of MP3 players that they work with – you need an MP3 player than can run Janus, Windows security thing. And a subscription to use a portable MP3 player is an extra £5 a month.

On the plus side the unlimited download thing means I’m not taking a gamble when I download a file. Which is why I downloaded Gourmandises by Alizée. With no charge for downloads I can indulge more eclectic musical tastes. I’m also downloading acid jazz, smooth jazz and that kind of jazz where it sounds like someone’s trying to hit a rat on a piano with a hammer. That last one was a mistake, but fortunately my computer has a “delete” function.

Like iTunes, Napster isn’t convenient for my portable MP3 player. I suppose I could record the output from the soundcard as an MP3, or else record it to Minidisc, but both of those things would be Bad Things To Do. All in all if I download more than one album a month then Napster beats iTunes hands down. Unusually Apple seems to have dropped the usability ball.