The New Era in Music Downloading
January 15, 2004
by David Brown

Illegal downloaders are running for cover. Lawsuits brought by the recording industry against teenagers and their clueless grandparents have dealt a blow to Kazaa users. Good luck finding what you need for free now. It’s time to start looking for other options.

Pay services have taken off and have shaken off many of their early-game jitters. Here is a look at the big three, each boasting libraries with over half a million songs.

iTunes – This is Apple’s highly-publicized service, originally available only to Mac users. Since then, they have opened iTunes up for even us evil PC users. But let’s be honest: Apple despises Microsoft and everyone who uses it. They want to convert us all to their products, and iTunes is just one battle in the revolution. Fittingly, the PC interface has a Mac feel to it, which I find disturbing and clumsy.

First of all, I can’t maximize the thing to cover my whole screen. It won’t get any bigger or smaller. What the hell is this!? I’ll tell you what it is: a slap in the face to every Gates-fearing PC geek littering the American landscape like cigarette butts. Offending me will not endear me to your products, Mr. Jobs. (Alright, I’ll give them credit. They fixed this in the new version of iTunes. I just installed it, and I can maximize all day long. Huzzah.)

One major annoyance is compatibility. When I download a song, it appears on my hard drive as something called an m4p file, also known as an AAC in Mac format. I have no idea what this is. It will play in the iTunes player, but I can’t import it to MusicMatch Jukebox, which is what I use to play MP3s. Looks like I’m stuck having to play these in iTunes. That’s reason enough for me to never use iTunes again, unless MusicMatch makes this format available to its own player.

Apple does have the benefit of being the product of choice for many artsy-types, and musicians are more than willing to lend their support to fight the corporate dominance of Microsoft. This could be the strongest advantage of iTunes. But until they force their will on me, I’m not taking another bite from the poisoned Apple.

Napster – Like a once-worshipped old girlfriend, Napster is back. Except this time around she’s divorced, on the rebound, and a little cross-eyed. No longer the free service that launched the music piracy movement into light speed, now you gotta pay to play. Also at 99 cents per song, it’s more user-friendly for the PC set. Its files come into your computer as wma’s (Windows media files), which is easily transferable to MusicMatch. I can also burn to a CD without much fanfare.

What bothers me is that I cannot convert Napster downloads to MP3. This means users cannot play Napster downloads on any portable device save a standard CD player. This is because they want you to buy Napster’s own portable player, a Samsung 20 gig unit which retails for a cool $350. No freaking way. At least I can download songs and play them on my default player. Better to wait and see who can maximize compatibility before shelling out the big bucks for a portable player.

Rhapsody – Rhapsody does things a little differently. You have to pay a subscription fee just for the privilege of downloading songs at 79 cents apiece. That’s not going to entice too many users. However, I will admit I gave it a shot when it first came out. The subscription fee is $9.95 a month, or $24.95 per three months. I signed up for the three month version at $25 just to try it out.

I have to admit, I was impressed. That subscription fee gives you access to their entire catalog. The music is streamed, but at a much higher quality than I had ever heard. It is essentially CD quality, and I encountered few problems with buffering, so songs were rarely interrupted or slow to load. If Rhapsody can continue to increase their catalog, this is something I may consider in the future. Particularly if I ever hooked up my computer to my stereo, which they show you how to do using the proper adapters and connectors.

But without a subscription, Rhapsody is virtually useless. They’ll have to start offering downloads without subscriptions if they want to survive. Let’s hope they do, because I think they could serve PC users better than either Napster or iTunes.

Final Thoughts: Each of these services has a long way to go, but each has its own strong points. For Mac users, iTunes is surely the only option. For the rest of us, it does provide a free internet radio service that offers lots of stations and pretty good sound quality. Napster and Rhapsody only offer full radio services to subscribers, and even those can’t compete with the iTunes free service. Definitely worth checking out (although it took a full minute to get through the ads after choosing a station).

Napster seems to be the place to go for PC users to download songs. It’s easy to search and use. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.

As for Rhapsody, if you are looking for a subscription service, look no further. You can get access to tons of tunes for a reasonable price. For the hardcore music buff who wants to listen to everything that comes out without buying hundreds of CDs, Rhapsody might be the way to go.

As far as the music catalogs of each, you’ll have to do your own research. They all have lots of stuff, and they are all missing lots of stuff. All I can tell you is that none of them has “Double Nickels on the Dime” by the Minutemen. You’ll have to figure out the rest for yourself.

(David Brown is a volunteer staff writer for 2 Walls Webzine.)