f13.net forums - Napster to Go: My review after using a month of the service

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July 20, 2025, 10:43:17 AM

we're back, baby

Napster to Go, for those of you who aren't "in the know", is a music download service that charges $14.99 USD a month to allow unlimited downloads of DRM protected .wmv files encoded at 128 kbps. What seperates this from their initial offering is the ability to transfer these tracks to a Microsoft certified "Plays for Sure" player. In my case, I used the recently released, and discontinued, the iRiver H320 (Highly reccomended player, by the way).
The first thing I noticed about Napster was how pleased I was with the variety of tracks and the speed at which they download. I downloaded anything from Ace of Base to the Caesars with ease. Also notable is the distinct lack of several big name artists' portfolios such as Guns n' Roses, and recent newcomers like The Arcade Fire. The tracks I did download, which eventually totaled 2000, had great audio quality and 2 tracks downloaded at a speedy 168k per second at a time.
Selection and playback wasn't the problem here though, and thus begins the negative part of the review. After downloading these programs, the lauded drag and drop capabilities of my iRiver player became useless since the DRM covered tracks required the syncing of the home computer and mp3 player through Windows Media Player 10. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, despite rumors that Windows Media Player 10 is nothing more than a spy-window for Microsoft into the world that is your computer, but varying from 10-50 tracks there's a I/O transfer error which halts the entire process and requires one to restart WMP10 and start over.
Considering the overall low price of the service in comparison to what I was getting, about 280 albums at my peak, I toughed it out and spent a large amount of time restarting and resyncing in order to transfer the licenses and tracks. This would be find with me, but the worst part of the service, and the most unacceptable, is the effect of the DRM on these tracks. The DRM reduces the usual 16 hours of battery life playing .mp3's to a paltry 6 hours. That's a ten hour drop due to overprotection on the part of either Napster or Microsoft. While the battery life reduction was bad enough to warrant one to steer clear from this beast, another ugly blemish rears its ugly head.
Each track downloaded from Napster requires roughly 4-6 seconds to open on my H320. Take into account that it's nearly an instant process when using a .mp3 file created from my own collection. Not only does this make track skipping a nightmare but also creates a gap between songs which isn't appreciated for the money that I shelled out for the compatable player and the service.

This review was written for the education of anyone thinking about buying it. Even after thorough searching online I couldn't find relatively little information on the problems listed above. The information I did find was after the fact on specific searches such as "shortened battery life with napster to go". Hopefully noone repeats my mistake, and boy did Napster jump the shark on this one.

Napster is about to have a nasty surprise.

Just tried the aforementioned method (before I tried replay music 2.0 with mixed results) and find that while it works, it's a pain the ass to assign tags to it. Autotagging programs work half the time at best, Musicbrainz being the best I've tried.

I looked at the Napster to Go service after their Super Bowl ad (which was at least effective in that it got me to go to their site). Something about the TOS just kept me from signing up. Aside from the fact I didn't have a compatible MP3 player, I was scared away by their Track Packs (discounted packs of songs) which expire 1-year after download, no matter what. There was also that whole Napster owns this track and you are just renting it feel to the whole thing that I really bugged me.

I'm an iTunes junkie. The price is easily comprehensible ($1 per song) and reasonable. If having DRM'd tracks bother you there are utilities to strip them that also leave your ID on the mp3 so that you don't just upload them to Kazaa or something.

Quote from: Lum on February 15, 2005, 10:58:05 AM

Ditto. I

iTunes. Interface is easy as hell, songs are cheap enough, and the library continues to grow weekly. I don't have a $5k sound system, so I don't notice any sound difference between my downloaded music and my CDs- other than some variable volume.

So this nifty napster monthly fee thing requires you to keep paying each month to retain your files?

I mean I guess you can do the stuff linked by schmoo, but that's a lot of work to save yourself the trouble of actually, you know, buying CDs and ripping them yourself.

Fucking license agreements....now I want to go DL their terms of service and pick them apart. At least it's research for this thesis paper I'm working on. LL.M. studies ftw!

Warning: Derail

I didn't know you were going for an LLM. What made you do it and what are you planning to use it for?