Digital Home Thoughts: Bumpy Start for Napster MP3 Store

"Outside of the above-listed annoyances, Napster MP3 worked as expected, and the music sounded clear to my untrained ears. The DRM-free selection (no matter how difficult it is to get to) is indeed very wide—even if we're misled into thinking it's even wider than it actually is. Napster claims that it has the largest major-label MP3 catalog in addition to the largest library of independent music, so those who are committed to never buying a DRMed track ever again may indeed find Napster's offering compelling. From our perspective, though, Amazon MP3 offers a better shopping and downloading experience than Napster currently does. Napster will likely need to tweak its system to make it more user-friendly if it wants to appeal to a mass audience."



Hopefully Amazon will be able to expand their catalog to compete. I think Amazon has a few things going for it. First off, they have a ton of customers that already have accounts with them and trust Amazon. This will be important in getting mainstream users purchasing digital tracks. Second, for their current customers, they have a ton of purchasing data which should help them make better recommendations. Finally, since they have lots of other lines of business, there is a lot of room for synergy. Buy an MP3 player from them, get 10 downloads or buy the physical CD, get discounted, or free immediate downloads.