Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Features, Reviews
TUAW Review: Napster MP3 store
As we noted yesterday, Napster has now rolled out the world's largest DRM-free MP3 store. In the spirit of the Amazon MP3 review we ran last year, I thought I would take Napster for a spin to see how the service works from a Mac-user's perspective. The first thing to note is that this is a download service. While Napster continues to run its subscription-based service (with downloads limited to Windows computers with Microsoft DRM), you do not need a subscription to purchase MP3s from the Napster Store (though you need an account, of course). Once downloaded the files are just straight 256kbps MP3s that should play without problem on any of a variety of devices. With that in mind, let's have a look at the Napster experience.
The Store
The first snag Mac users are likely to run into is this one:
The Napster Store is not compatible with Safari. They helpfully suggest Firefox, but since Camino is my secondary browser I tried that and it worked okay. The music store interface seems to be AJAX and is frankly rather sluggish. There is a search box at the top that allows you to search by artist, album, track, or all. Results are returned in a tabbed interface as you see below.
You can choose individual tracks or the Album tab to reveal complete albums. Next to each track or album name are two buttons, one labeled ":30" and the other "MP3." If you hit the ":30" button you'll get a pop-up windows with a player interface that will, after a short delay, play a 30 second snippet of the track. If you hit the ":30" button for an album the player will feature 30 second previews of each track in the album. When you hit the "MP3" button either the track or album will be added to your shopping cart.
Once you have selected the tracks you want to buy you can then hit the green "Purchase" button to complete your transaction. You will naturally have to have a Napster account to purchase the tracks, but you do not need a subscription. Payment can be made either with a credit card or through PayPal.
It's at the point that things start to get very clunky for Mac users. Once you have purchased the tracks you must download them one at a time! You will be presented with a list of your purchased tracks with a "Download" button next to each one. You must click the button and wait for the download to start before you click the next one.
What is particularly stunning is that you must actually wait for each download to start before you hit the next download button. In my testing I hit two of the buttons in quick succession and only received the second track. The button next to the first track track changed to read "Downloaded" (even though it had not), and I was not able to retrieve that track. The tracks download like any other file you might download with your browser and so they all ended up in my Downloads folder.
Note that you can download more than one track at a time, so long as you wait for each download to start before you hit the button for the next one. Frankly, this seems like an unconscionable bug. However, lesson learned, I successfully downloaded the rest of the album one track (and click) at a time.
Since I live to serve I took it upon myself to purchase a 52 track album of bluegrass gospel as my test album. Therefore, it took 52 distinct clicks to download the album. Once it downloaded I copied all the tracks to iTunes via drag and drop from the Finder. The entire process took a ridiculous amount of time.
The Music
The MP3s themselves are mostly (though not all) encoded at 256kbps and have embedded album art. Most of the ID3 tags are filled in. The only thing I noticed missing is total number of tracks. So for instance here it says that "He Will Set Your Fields On Fire" is track number 23 but fails to include that there are 52 total tracks.
While it does not appear in the comments field in iTunes, if you do a Get Info on a Napster MP3 in the Finder you'll find that it includes a comment: "Purchased from Napster."
Conclusion
While the Napster MP3 store has a good selection and okay prices, I cannot recommend it at this time for Mac users. The downloading scheme is completely untenable. Requiring the user to click a download button for every single track is completely inane. On Windows there is apparently a Napster downloader to automate the process, but there is no Mac counterpart. The Amazon MP3 downloader, on the other hand, is very easy to use and blows the Napster user experience out of the water.
At this time I think I will continue to make Amazon MP3 my first stop in downloading music. I'm willing to pay the inconvenience "tax" versus the iTunes Store in exchange for the 256kbps DRM-free MP3, but only because, in the case of Amazon, the tax is not that high. Napster, on the other hand, is a bear. While I can just barely imagine using it to download a 10 track album not available on the other services, it is far and away the third choice in music downloading. If Napster really expects to compete with Amazon MP3, much less iTunes, it's going to have to make a much, much better showing than this.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
TomWBrowning said 1:07PM on 5-22-2008
Forcing me to use a browser I hate? No sale, napster bozos.
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AlphaDeltaVIII said 2:49PM on 5-22-2008
Just have Safari spoof the User Agent in the Develop menu
Jon Iverson said 1:18PM on 5-22-2008
Not interested in any download sites that don't offer full resolution lossless files.
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dastranger said 1:35PM on 5-22-2008
So, I guess you don't download from anywhere?
Sorry, but it's been shown, study after study, in blind testings nearly NO ONE CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE.
Galley said 2:03PM on 5-22-2008
My ears cannot tell the difference between 192Kbps AAC and lossless, but my brain can. They can keep their crummy mid-90s technology; I'll stick with CDs.
Also, 52 clicks? Was it designed by Microsoft?
Darren said 2:12PM on 5-22-2008
Nobody cares.
Jon Iverson said 12:00AM on 5-23-2008
dastranger - you could start here:
http://ghosts.nin.com/
http://www.hdtracks.com
http://www.linnrecords.com
etc.
Also, there is a difference that is easy to hear - but if it doesn't matter to you, no problem.
Rob Williams said 1:32PM on 5-22-2008
Far and above the biggest annoyance is that this is a US-only service. When will these companies realise that the rest of the world exists as well?! We've been waiting for an age to get Amazon's download service, all the while stuck with Apple's pathetic DRM-filled 128kbps offerings.
While I'm sure there are legal battles to be fought to provide the UK, Europe, Asia etc with the same services, if they've managed it in the US, why not anywhere else?!
Also, the lack of support for Safari, which is, afterall, entirely standards compliant is just short-sighted laziness.
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Adam Schoales said 1:38PM on 5-22-2008
I totally agree. Wanted to use Amazon MP3 for the longest time but no dice here in Canada. I still use iTunes for some stuff, but as it stands I spend lots of time in record stores or over at the demonoid...
When will companies get that if they want us to Pay they got to give us the oppertunity to. You cant expect everyone out there to start buying music if you say "sorry you don't live here". It's almost like saying "guess your going to have to download somewhere else..." which is pretty much saying "steal our music".
not that I would condone that sort of behaviour...
apernett said 2:35PM on 5-22-2008
I totally agree with you... but for the record (no pun intended), every country has their own copyrights laws set, and sometimes they differ one to another, so that's why maybe the records labels don't offer their catalogs in other countries, but if we apply the same logic... I bought cd's from Amazon, and Im not even an american citizen nor do I live in the States (actually I'm colombian and lives in Colombia), so is confusing... sigh...!
Simon Arch said 6:08PM on 5-22-2008
"Far and above the biggest annoyance is that this is a US-only service."
Studies have shown that the rest of the world doesn't actually exist, so they can hardly be blamed for not selling to people who are obviously figments of our imagination. ;)
Seriously though international copyrights are VEEEEEERY tricky, and distribution agreements tend to by byzantine. I know it's frustrating, but give it time. At least with the iTunes store you can buy from any region if you get a gift card from the appropriate region.
Also: @Mat - Flatt & Scruggs? Excellent choice! Bluegrass rules!
Quix said 2:08PM on 5-22-2008
So what do Napster and Amazon offer over iTunes other than the unfair competitive advantage given them by the record companies to sell DRM-free music?
Why, nothing at all.
I smell weasels.
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obtusegoose said 2:29PM on 5-22-2008
Agreed.
Simon Arch said 6:17PM on 5-22-2008
Well, they do sell their music in a format which will work on any media player on the market, whereas Apple's music only works on players which support FairPlay. In other words, the iPod. Not that there's anything wrong with the iPod, but it does give the user more flexibility in how/where they can play the music they purchase.
Though I wonder if the iTunes+ files (which are DRM-free) can be played on media players which support AAC (and there are several). Does anyone know? If so the biggest difference would be selection.
VanillaSpice said 1:36AM on 5-23-2008
That is the original commentor's point, Simon - that it is the record companies, and not Apple, who decided that the iTunes Store would sell DRMed music while Amazon and Napster could have it DRM-free.
The record companies are giving those other companies this unfair and un-competitive advantage to pay Apple back for trying to maintain pricing parity (an advantage to consumers and a big disadvantage to companies).
And yes, iTunes Plus files can be played on any AAC-compatible player.
miki said 3:05AM on 5-23-2008
I'm an audio professional and I consider aac@128 kbps of iTunes store better than a mp3@256 kbps. Btw not all songs of iTunes Store are DRM-free...
I'm also waiting for lossless files! :-)
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Shawn said 1:59PM on 5-22-2008
I can't believe that Napster STILL hasn't added the total tracks (or Disc Number) info. I used Napster back when it first came out to see what it was like, and it always bugged me that the total tracks and disc number info was blank. because for box sets, you get six track ones, then six track twos, etc. Not a big deal, but annoying. Also, the "genre" used to be a number. Again, an annoyance that grows exponentially the more tracks you have.
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Jake said 2:02PM on 5-22-2008
So far, amazon seems to be doing a lot better at the download process. I hope TUAW will keep an eye on Napster and let us know if they add support for Safari and make downloading easier.
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Ryan Trevisol said 2:33PM on 5-22-2008
Downloading one-at-a-time? Reminds me of the heady days of AllofMP3.com.
Now THAT was a service I could get behind, pay-per-MB, with encoded-on-the-fly in any format you could dream of.
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YodaMac said 3:11PM on 5-22-2008
Maybe it's just me, but since I started paying for music downloads I no longer care about DRM. It just doesn't seem to be a real-life day-to-day issue unless you're trying to share music illegally or get music shared illegally.
iTunes music files seem to work just fine on my iPod, computers, AppleTV, etc. as well as my spouses - and that's all that really matters: if it works.
DRM doesn't seem to interfere with my music enjoyment, so I guess I don't see the issue anymore. I'll stick with iTunes.
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