Napster opens the world's largest MP3 store
INTERNET MUSIC trailblazer and former music copyright lawsuit defendant, Napster announced today that it's opened the world's largest online MP3 store.
Napster's music catalogue reportedly contains more than six million tracks from all the major recording labels and many independents. It claims that its MP3 library is over 50 per cent larger than any of its competitors' music stores, although Amazon is said to have five million tunes available. Apple purports to have only two million DRM-free music tracks available online.
The company will offer all its MP3s free of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) controls, which is a change from Napster's earlier practice of flogging tunes encumbered by Microsoft's onerous 'playforsure' format. Napster also plans to continue its monthly subscription service using DRM, which makes it the first to offer an unlimited music subscription that also lets subscribers buy DRM free copies of songs they like enough to want to own.
Since they are DRM free, MP3s bought from Napster can be downloaded onto any MP3 player, including Ipods, and can be backed up, burned onto CD and transferred to other storage devices.
Some of Napster's music tracks will reportedly have identifying watermarks, however these will only identify the source as Napster, not the purchaser's ID.
Napster will sell individual MP3 tracks for 99 cents each and albums for $9.95. Most of its music catalogue, including releases from all major record labels, is encoded at the high quality MP3 bit-rate of 256kbps. Downloaded tracks will also include high resolution album art.
"Music fans have spoken and it’s clear they need the convenience, ease of use and broad interoperability of the DRM-free MP3 format, and they want to be able to find both major label artists and independent music all in one place. Napster is delighted to deliver all of this and more with the world’s largest MP3 catalogue," Napster's Chairman and CEO Chris Gorog said in a statement. µ
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"Napster will sell individual MP3 tracks for 99 cents each"

Or you know, 79p. Because thats what a 1.97 dollar to the pound ratio gets you these days.
The price, the format and the range looks good, but "We're sorry but you cannot purchase tracks from outside the United States.".

Maybe an english blog should have mentioned this somewhere...
Checked Napster.ca... No MP3s, just the DRM crap still.
Yet another site pops of with play all, download all, copy all, but ONLY if you live in the US.

What's the big deal about this ? - if I pay for the music I should be able to download it where ever I'm located in the world.

Great idea with an online store but sucks when it just doesn't work outside the US.
When can we expect something like that in Canada? If they can send me music CDs from the US, why can't I just buy mp3s too?
I have no direct affiliation w/ Napster but am in the same end of the business - It's likely that Napster made the decision to go US only because /some/ distribution is better than none and the labels still aren't dealing with any single entity for worldwide distribution. The digital distribution market is changing rapidly and there will be a number of different competing models until the best few shake out.
Napster was fun when you could download things for free from there. :)
...can you not use a web proxy that's within the US and buy/download through that?
So these tracks have so called watermarks?

Does anyone really believe these are inaudible?

Oh and Inq., change the title to "Napster opens the United States's largest MP3 store" please.

Am I the only one going off Inq. due to this sort of lazy IT reporting?
back to try before you buy then. Make it easy for me, or give me the address of the artist who music i jsut ripped, so i can forward him some honest cash.

Don't make me pay for the drm garbage you wack on cd's, or overcharge in the UK because you think we are all stupid enough to just go ahead and do so.

sorry, rant over.

Feeling better?
What I would like to see is a site which you can create Video DVD's and download. Something were you can select 10+ tracks from various artists and the site gets the high quality music video's, creates them into a DVD/ISO for you do download. Again pay by the track. It would be good to create a dvd to watch of your favourate songs which are no longer able to be found or are never played anymore.
Ya, well I STILL to this day will NOT buy anything from Metallica. Those jerks will never see another penny of mine after the original Napster fiasco. Many people feel the same way about those arses.
...when they finally wise up and start offering music in FLAC.

Oliver.
i've found a website on which you can listen to all the songs you like for FREE, and it's legal because they pay rights to the majors and all that. the website is called deezer ( http://www.deezer.com/en ) and on it you can stream all the songs you like without installing anythin and all taht. it's just brilliant to find all the music you like in just a few clicks, just love it, give it a try if you want to !!