AfterDawn: Tech news

Napster 2.0 launched

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 29 Oct 2003 1:35 User comments (4)

Napster 2.0 launched 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

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4 user comments

130.10.2003 05:45

Huhm, not that I´m an audiophile or anything, but I have heard some bad things about WMA. What format does iTunes use?

230.10.2003 14:05

I believe it's a proprietary version of mp4 (AAC). May be different on the windoze side of the tracks though.

330.10.2003 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.

430.10.2003 14:19

Using a dialup connection, Napster server intermittently stops sending audio previews. It's rather irritating.

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