Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Napster, Yahoo and XM Radio Compared at F-Stop Blues
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 12:00 PM
"Ever since Napster’s Super Bowl half-time commercial I have been thinking I should take another look at subscription based music services. I decided to try out Napster, Yahoo, and XM Radio services. Each service is different but they all give you some type of unlimited music each month for a monthly fee."
Trying to pick a subscription service? This article has a nice overview of the three main options. I have a Napster subscription myself, but I share the reviewer's concern with the fact that many tracks aren't available for streaming/downloading with the music subscription (take the new Dave Matthew's Band album for instance). Kind of makes you wonder what the point is then, doesn't it? I also find the WMP10 interface slow and kludgy - it seems to be mostly Web-based with no local storage for graphics, meaning when you switch over to it there's a huge pause while WMP waits for the data to be downloaded. If there's network congestion, WMP essentially hangs for 5-10 seconds. :? There are proper way to do Web-based applications, and Napster is not it.
Trying to pick a subscription service? This article has a nice overview of the three main options. I have a Napster subscription myself, but I share the reviewer's concern with the fact that many tracks aren't available for streaming/downloading with the music subscription (take the new Dave Matthew's Band album for instance). Kind of makes you wonder what the point is then, doesn't it? I also find the WMP10 interface slow and kludgy - it seems to be mostly Web-based with no local storage for graphics, meaning when you switch over to it there's a huge pause while WMP waits for the data to be downloaded. If there's network congestion, WMP essentially hangs for 5-10 seconds. :? There are proper way to do Web-based applications, and Napster is not it.
