geebea;402425 Wrote: 
> Just looking for something that is free or advert based and has the same
> search possibilities as Napster. Napster is like £10 a month that is
> more than I spend on CD's a month. 
> ...
> Do you guys subscribe to Napster, is it expensive in the states too?
> Gee
You're likely to be looking for a long time then. I haven't done a full
economic analysis of music services, but it seems fairly evident that
they need the subscription revenue to make a go of it after paying the
licensing fees required for providing specific-tracks-on-demand
service. In most (all?) cases the agreements that free services like
LastFM, Pandora, Deezer's free service, and others have with the music
labels *prohibit* them from playing specific tracks on demand. For
Rhapsody or Napster or the fee-based Deezer service to play specific
tracks on demand, or full albums, they have to pony up more money to
the labels, and the services have to recoup that from somewhere. 

Napster in the US is $13/month, less than £10 at the standard GBP/USD
exchange rate, but about in line with comparative costs of a lot of
things on either side of the pond. That's more than you spend on CDs in
a month, but you don't get as wide a selection on that CD budget either.
On the other hand, at least you get to keep the CDs you buy, whereas the
Napster library disappears when you stop subscribing (I'm not talking
about buying Napster downloads here, which costs about the same as
buying the CD). 

Personally, I used Rhapsody's 30 day trial and was considering
subscribing, but their delivery via Squeezebox was too unreliable to
warrant buying into it. Now I'm giving Napster a chance to shine.


-- 
aubuti
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