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Napster 2.0 launched

29 October 2003 13:35 by Petteri "dRD" Pyyny | 4 comments

Napster 2.0, a legal online digital music store from Roxio, was launched officially today in the U.S. The new service follows the path of Apple's iTunes in its pricing and its DRM-capabilities.

As most of Napster's specs were announced earlier this month, bundled with massive hype and creative advertising, the launch itself didn't contain real surprises. Napster is, like iTunes, based on a separate application, not on a browser-UI like Buy.com's service. Singles cost $0.99 and full albums cost $9.95. Napster also features a $9.99 a month service level that allows unlimited listening of tracks, but doesn't contain download rights or CD burning rights.

Application itself includes integrated CD burning (not a big surprise, considering that they need to protect the files), audio player and all the usual bells and whistles -- official screenshots are available from here.

As of now, Napster 2 has an impressive music catalog, total of 500,000 titles, which gives it somewhat of an edge over most of the competitors in this rather crowded market. Files are encoded and protected using Microsoft's WMA format.

More information:

Napster.com - screenshots
Official press release

Permalink to this article

Decriminalize file-sharing with taxes? (22 September 2004)

Roxio sells software division (10 August 2004)

Napster launches in Canada (28 May 2004)

Napster teams up with Dixons in the UK (5 May 2004)

Napster plans for UK launch (3 March 2004)

Napster hits 5M sold songs (24 February 2004)

University of Rochester signs a deal with Napster (5 February 2004)

Yahoo to enter into online music business? (4 February 2004)

Napster adds support for more portable MP3 players (2 February 2004)

Real launches RealPlayer 10 with AAC support and music store (7 January 2004)

iTunes: over 20M songs sold (9 December 2003)

HP to launch online music service (3 December 2003)

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Discuss this article!
Ghostdog (Senior Member) 30 October 2003 5:45
Huhm, not that I�m an audiophile or anything, but I have heard some bad things about WMA. What format does iTunes use? [ + quote]
GrayArea (Member) 30 October 2003 14:05
I believe it's a proprietary version of mp4 (AAC). May be different on the windoze side of the tracks though. We mustn't lower ourselves to the level of those we loathe, lest we become loathsome ourselves. [ + quote]
GrayArea (Member) 30 October 2003 14:11
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/14/1943253&mode=thread&tid=141&tid=176&tid=188 A sort of relevant link to a slashdot thread about ipod and AAC fidelity. We mustn't lower ourselves to the level of those we loathe, lest we become loathsome ourselves. [ + quote]
luigi2000 (Newbie) 30 October 2003 14:19
Using a dialup connection, Napster server intermittently stops sending audio previews. It's rather irritating. [ + quote]