Napster launched its Web-based MP3 download store yesterday, and it seems to be the latest digital music whipping boy, with negative reviews in several places.
Let me start with the positives. Napster claims the store has 6 million tracks, which is 50% larger than any other MP3 store out there. They do have a single download of "The Promise" by When in Rome, an obscure 1980s single my wife loves but that iTunes will only let you buy as part of the full Napoleon Dynamite soundtrack. I'm sorry, Apple, but I won't pay more than $0.99 to get that song.
Two album results...but we won't show them to you.
(Credit: Screenshot)And of course it must be mentioned that every song on Napster's MP3 store is DRM-free, meaning it can be transferred to an unlimited number of computers and devices and will play in just about every music software program known to humankind.
But I'm afraid that Napster still falls short in interface design--a longtime complaint I've had with the company.
Oddly, the Napster home page still features the subscription service far more prominently than the MP3 store, even though the store launched today and will presumably be attracting a lot of onlookers.
When you do find the store, you'll probably recognize it: it looks an awful lot like iTunes rendered within a browser. Which would be fine if it worked as well as iTunes. Unfortunately, there are a few gaps. First, if you have Firefox pop-up blocking enabled, you have to turn it off. Second, when you get a list of search results, they seem to be listed in a random order, making it hard to find a particular item. (Perhaps they're listed by popularity? It doesn't say.) You can arrange them alphabetically, but it takes some hunting and clicking--some of the headers are clickable, some aren't.
Then, there are just some general bugs. For example, when I searched for the new Nick Cave album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig, I got a green bar showing me that two album results were available...but the screen for the results was strangely blank. (See the screenshot.) Huh? Another glitch: when I conducted a new search, sometimes it ignored the changed search terms and re-ran the previous search.
I also ran into the "this MP3 is not available" debacle that this Ars Technica reviewer describes--in this case, it was for a Pink Floyd album I was particularly excited about downloading, an obscure 2005 re-release of two songs from a 1968 movie called Tonight Let's All Make Love in London. But although the album showed up in my search results with a little "MP3" tag next to them, the MP3s aren't actually available for purchase. Insane.
Amazon.com launched its long-awaited music download store last week, and while plenty of "me too" download stores have tried to take on Apple's iTunes over the last four years, I think Amazon has a chance. Here's why:
1. Just MP3s. Amazon's the first store to launch with a significant catalog (2 million songs) of totally portable songs. That is, all tracks are in the MP3 format and unencumbered by DRM, meaning they're playable on any music software, any platform, and any portable device. While eMusic has made a run at selling MP3s, they lack most major label titles: run a search for Pink Floyd at both sites and see what comes up. Sony and Warner are still holding out, but at least Amazon's got the other two majors (EMI and Universal).
2. Customer base. You're probably already an Amazon customer, meaning they already have all the information they need for you to start shopping--go to the site, and if you haven't cleared your cookies recently, they know who you are, and have your credit card number already on file. They even have recommendations based on your past purchases and any lists (like wish lists) you've made. You can download an add-on application that loads the MP3s directly into iTunes or Windows Media Player, but that's optional. Contrast that with the sign-up process you have to go through at most any other online music store.
3. Pricing. Amazon features variable pricing--something that Apple's iTunes has not yet embraced--meaning that the top 100 single songs cost only $0.89 apiece, and many albums are less than $10 (and often less than the physical CD sold on Amazon).
4. Platform. Even as Microsoft is finally building out a viable online services platform, Amazon's been leading the way for over a year now, with Amazon Web Services, a set of hosted services for developers. For instance, Amazon Flexible Payment Services allows Web developers to do some fairly complicated e-commerce activities, like accept micropayments, as well as accept money from the millions of existing Amazon customers, without building an e-commerce system from the ground up. Now imagine if Amazon takes its music store and opens it up to third-party Web sites, so that anybody can sell individual tracks using Amazon's platform. Independent musicians would be able to sell MP3s directly from their Web sites and keep the full transaction amount. It could also evolve into the kind of fan-based promotion and sales network that BurnLounge is trying to build, but with a trusted, well-known brand behind it.
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