napster.com

A free MP3 player is the cheese in this mousetrap. OK heres what you actually get for £15 a month:

-Ability to listen to any tunes on napster.
-Ability to transfer tunes to MP3 player *only during subscription*

You never actually ge to burn any tunes or keep any tunes. £15 a month buys a jukebox. Thats it. Or rather it lets you rent a jukebox.

I can see what Napster are doing here. They want you to subscribe, then you build a nice little jukebox with playlists etc that you get used to and start to think of as 'my own collection'. But when you want to cancel, you lose your entire music collection, so it's like a trap - pay £15 a month or lose you music collection. You can of course buy DRM WMV albums at £8 a pop, but you can only play them on 3 different PCs and burn them 3 times in audio CD format. No more archiving to CD. CD audio only. Overall Napster is an impressive program, and a bright idea that untimatley fails because of the inability to keep tracks downloaded during a subscription. The £10 package is best, because the more expensive £15 one only buys you the ability to use the drm tracks on compatable mp3 player.

also, if you have an ipod, just forget it, cos NONE of these tracks will work on it.

Reasons why you should get napster:

1. You want the 'free' MP3 player. Good enuf reason as long as you cancel after the required 3 months. Total cost will be £45 plus u get the jukebox for 3 months = good deal.

2. You are stinking rich and want a permanent live jukebox to hook up to your awesome stereo system to impress your mates.

3. You are stupid.

4. You habitually don't read small print. ;-)