Petteri Pyyny
29 Oct 2003 13:35
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