Great tool for home "cd auditioning"
Written: Nov 10 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Free, able to find a lot of different music from different countries/styles
Cons: Slow download times, a bit congested.
|
|
|
| hm8080's Full Review: Napster |
Okay, I too, want to jump onto the bandwagon and write a review of Napster. Although, there are already many splendid ones written here. So, I’ll be writing more from a personal experience point of view rather than giving you a thorough examination of the “product.”
A bit on controversy
Right then, we all know (or at least, all of us with interest enough to use Napster) that Napster is being persecuted by the record industry (RIAA etc)…why? You’ll find different reasons from different sides…most notably because they claim Napster promotes piracy. It doesn’t hold the copyrighted songs in its own serves but rather, it “encourages” people to trade music royalty free from their own hard drives in their computers. Look at it as a whole new way for people to listen to music if you want, but I really think the RIAA has some reason to worry. Sure, a lot of us love it and use it to find hard-to-find music or to audition songs before buying the actual CD but think about it…there has GOT to be many others who abuse it. I.e. use it to burn MP3 CDs from downloaded songs and then SELLING them!
Using Napster
Simple and straight forward. Download it for free and on startup, it will ask you to sign up a new account or enter your username if you are an existing user. Then you can use the quick-access buttons to the top of the screen (toolbar) and choose what you need to do. I suggest you use the search utility to find music you want. I don’t like using the chat rooms as they take up bandwidth while I’m downloading music. Here’s a tip, look for search results and people with the shortest response time, as well as T1 or cable or faster connection. This will help to shorten your download times as they don’t suffer too much from internet lag and slow connections.
Once you become a member, the software tries to search your hard drive and asks you to specify permission/rights as to which music folders to share with the community. This is the folder where you keep your own MP3s and if you want to share them, just tell the software to itemise that folder. This will show up in your own online profile. You can also tell it where to keep downloaded files.
The search utility works great. For example, even if you entered “Weird Al” in the wrong field, say, in the Album field instead of the artist field, it will still furnish you with results of what you were looking for: anything to do with Weird Al.
You can also message the people who are online and ask them specific questions. For example, if I was online, and I had a song that seemed interesting, you could message me and ask me more about it. Be warned though, some people do not bother to respond to inquiries.
Annoyances
One thing that totally annoys me is that sometimes, during the download of a song, the connection terminates and download fails. This could either be because the person who has the song terminated, logged off, or cancelled the transfer on his end.
Blessing in disguise?- BUT, all is NOT lost however, you can still right click on the file being downloaded on the transfer screen and select “play song.” This will play the song up to wherever it was when download was terminated. This is great also in that it allows you to download only the first few seconds of a song to see if it’s the one you are looking for etc.
Another annoyance is that sometimes the Napster servers are so busy that you cannot log on at all when you just have to find one particular song. So you have to wait a couple and try again, only to fail again. This has happened to me a few times and really does annoy me. But then again, there are a LOT of people using Napster these days. This also results in download times that are way too long sometimes. For example, on a 56k modem, downloading a 5 minute song can take as long as a whole hour!
What I use it for
I use Napster to “audition” CDs. I have used it to find songs that are very hard to find, songs of a new album I’m interested in buying etc. I love it because I can always listen to the songs first to see if the CD is worth buying. That way I don’t waste money on one single and a whole lot of other lousy tracks. Now, THIS is another reason why I think the record companies and artist are afraid of Napster. They are afraid we might listen to the other tracks and realize they’re just one-hit wonders with nothing else on the album worth listening to…so we may not buy their music at all, hence a lost of revenue. Well…if they want us to spend money, and get our support, they should out material that is WORTH our money and support!
Hard to find stuff - After the Olympics took place in DownUnder, I was introduced to some really great songs (during the games as well as during the closing concert), but they are not available in stores here so what to do? Go look for them with Napster!
Another thing is that I love to listen to remixed singles and Napster has tons of them. Just make a search for your favorite single and you are bound to come up with some other remixed versions.
Final words
Well I think I’ve said enough here, I could go on I guess and throw in my own take about “morals” and what’s right and what’s wrong. But I personally do not see where Napster is doing anything wrong. If anything at all, it is promoting music across the globe. People from different countries and cultures can get to listen to other people’s songs and experience new genres and music styles etc. I think it’s great that you don’t have to go to the store to audition a new CD or album, just download it!
You might have your own opinions on Napster, but I hope you enjoyed reading mine and above all else, just have fun on Epinions! :)
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
hm8080
|
|
Location: Where the sun rises first
Reviews written: 61
Trusted by: 32 members
About Me:
Sometimes there not always here...
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.