Last week, Napster announced that they would start selling 6 million DRM-free songs after signing deals with 4 major labels and many indies. With iTunes leading the pack and Amazon offering DRM-free songs, many for 89 cents, is Napster really going to make a difference? I personally have only downloaded songs from iTunes and Amazon. The only thing that will compel me to download songs from Napster is if they have a song that the other two don’t have or if they start selling songs cheaper than Amazon. Right now Amazon is my first stop because they sell songs DRM free and usually at a lower price. For the few of you that don’t know what DRM-free is, it stands for Digital Rights Management and it prevents us from sharing our songs with others and playing them on any device we want. I have been sharing music with my friends since back in the day when everybody used to make mixtapes and I would like to continue to do that now. I don’t put my music up on the internet for any random person to have, so I don’t feel guilty. I like the convenience of iTunes and it offers the best user experience, but until they can offer their whole catalog DRM-free then Amazon will be my first stop. Napster is not getting very good reviews from what I have read and most of it is because of an unfriendly user interface, it won’t even work if Mac users use Safari. So Napster, if you want me to start using your service then add some value like a higher bit rate or a better price than Amazon. Forty-nine cents a song and I’m all yours! If the record labels are listening, the lower the price the more we will buy. Raise the price and I will download less.
~Riley
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