[Macworld]

Post your comments for Hands on with Napster here

[JackWebb]

Good article and thanks for confirming that there are still many tracks that are only 30 second samples unlike Rhapsody.

[leicaman]

It certainly sounds a lot less interesting since you can't play all their music all the way through. Why are they obsessed with MP3, which is a generation behind AAC? Why not DMR-free ACC as an option? Transcoding reduces quality.

[Chris Breen]

leicaman said:

>Why are they obsessed with MP3, which is a generation behind AAC? Why not DMR-free ACC as an option? Transcoding reduces quality.

Probably because more legacy devices are compatible with MP3 than with AAC. And at 256kbps LAME-encoded, these things sound remarkably good. My guess is that the vast majority of people couldn't tell the difference between one of these files and a version encoded as an AAC file.

[Dan Frakes]

leicaman said:

Why are they obsessed with MP3, which is a generation behind AAC? Why not DMR-free ACC as an option? Transcoding reduces quality.

Keep in mind that AAC was specifically designed to offer better fidelity-for-the-bit-rate than MP3 at lower bit rates. Once you get up to higher bit rates, such as 256, the difference between MP3 and AAC is much smaller than it is at 96, 128, etc. In my experience, few people can tell the difference between MP3 and AAC at 256.

[SubFuze]

There's stuff that Napster has and Rhapsody doesn't as well as the other way around. It's a very small percentage that can't be streamed. The major difference is that Rhapsody doesn't show non-streamable content by default- it's not that they don't have any.

[snapJudgment]

This has to do with what has streaming rights and what does not, which is determined by the record labels agreements with the service. However, just because you don't have streaming rights doesn't mean you can't sell the same track (yay confusion!). I believe Rhapsody tries to simplify things by not playing a stream at all(?), whereas Napster will at least throw you a 30 sec clip. This isn't made very clear to the user however, and definitely falls in the "rough edges" category. In terms of libraries both Napster and Rhapsody each have tracks the other does not, which probably makes which service is preferable to you streaming-wise variable on a band by band basis.

[JackWebb]

Another difference is that you can see everything on Rhapsody to determine what is there to stream or not without creating an account. Napster hides this making you have to get a trial account so they can have your email etc.

[hillstones]

Must be nice with disposable incomes. But with unemployment shooting through the roof everywhere, the first thing to go in household expenses will be those subscription music services.

What a lousy service if only some music can be streamed. But Napster was never known as a good service. Chris, it looks like your money is better spent with Rhapsody.

[Chris Breen]

hillstones said:

Must be nice with disposable incomes. But with unemployment shooting through the roof everywhere, the first thing to go in household expenses will be those subscription music services.

I'd likely look at expenses greater than $5 a month.

Quote

What a lousy service if only some music can be streamed. But Napster was never known as a good service. Chris, it looks like your money is better spent with Rhapsody.

As someone up the Comments line explained, the difference is that Napster shows you everything it has where Rhapsody hides those tracks that can't be streamed. For example, George Harrison's All Things Must Pass appears on Napster, but only as 30 second previews. Rhapsody doesn't list it at all.

Currently, I have both Napster and Rhapsody. At $5 and five "free" MP3 downloads I can't see any reason to not have Napster.

[rlav]

I just checked Napster Japan. The cheapest deal they have is at current exchange rates about $13.50 per month. A bit too much for me. (And no, we don't have subscriptions to any satellite or cable TV channels, and we have about one latte every 3 months!)

[ZeroGravX]

JackWebb said:

Another difference is that you can see everything on Rhapsody to determine what is there to stream or not without creating an account. Napster hides this making you have to get a trial account so they can have your email etc.

Huh? There are two places you can browse their content without creating an account. Go to http://home.napster....sic/genre.html] and there you will find what's in their library of music. Or you can go to [http://free.napster.com and actually listen to their music without an account, albeit a very low quality stream.

[JackWebb]

There are no links to either of those two links you provided that I can find on their front page. I'm even less impressed with their service if they allow backdoor access but see fit to hide this on their front page to try to get you to sign up. I'm turned off with less than honest approaches.

Within the past year I tried to find more about their catalog without having to sign-up but eventually gave-in and did a demo with them probably b/c I was getting really mad with Rhapsody at the time.