The headphone-wearing, music-proliferating kitty-cat is back. Napster re-launched Wednesday as a music mega-search engine, sporting a new sheen, a new online magazine, Fuzz, new adjoining streaming stations and, of course, a new ubiquitous philosophy. The Napster of yore--the grassroots one that was as much our generational icon as it was our free music provider--has vanished under an avalanche of music industry lawsuits. Instead, the new Napster is like the new Liz Phair, who is fittingly featured in the current issue of Fuzz. They both went from indie to corporate.
Meet Roxio Inc., the online media software company and the proud owner of Napster 2.0. With one fell swipe of its raised claw, Roxio hopes that its music feline will overpower both legal download services like iTunes and Musicmatch and illegal ones like KaZaA and Limewire. Also meet Microsoft Inc. again, who has chosen Napster as the music-service-of-choice for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004. This is definitely not 1999 music vigilante extraordinaire Napster. Fourth-quarter buyers of Gateway Media Center PCs will receive a month of free Napster access, and the Napster logo has been tattooed on new iPod-like music players, pre-paid Napster music cards available at your local ExxonMobil and all across the gray surface of the new product.
None of this says anything about the new product's physical attributes, though. Napster 2.0 offers 500,000 songs, the greatest number among current music services (100,000 more than the next largest, iTunes). The cost of each song is 99 cents and the cost of each album is $9.99, which includes the album art. But it gets somewhat better: You're able to download and listen to most of Napster's musical inventory, interact on Napster's message boards, view current music videos, check out Billboard charts since 1963 and access the 48 commercial-free radio stations, or if you'd like, create your own--all of this for a subscription of $9.95 a month.
I realized, however, when I was on customer support hold to the tune of "Proud To Be An American" that things weren't as perfect as they seemed. Since, starting up the program, I'd been having problems actually buying a track or album; instead of Dido's "White Flag," I was getting error messages that asked me to check my internet connection even though both AOL and Internet Explorer were up and running. After restarting my computer, I finally was able to buy the Raveonettes' album and "White Flag," but more error messages appeared. I made the call to Derrick, the Napster customer specialist, who instructed me to un-install and re-install the program. Wrong advice. An hour later, I learned that the Napster FAQ was indeed incorrect; Napster's player will only run with the latest version of Windows Media Player, which I subsequently downloaded.
Napster has been running smoothly ever since and I've been busy exploring its nooks and crannies. Going through my playlist, I noticed several trends in the artist selection. Craig David, Panjabi MC, Daft Punk or Sondre Lerche tracks are not available; international representation is surprisingly low. The indie music genre is also clearly understaffed; you won't find Le Tigre, Electric Six or Bright Eyes here. (The indie rock station airs mostly repeats of three groups: The Shins, The Strokes and Hot Hot Heat). Of course, some of the classics like the Beatles, "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'," Blondie and even Dr. Demento and his "Monster Mash" are noticeably absent, but perhaps the thing that surprised me most was the relative nonexistence of big names like Dave Matthews, Creed, Kid Rock and LeAnn Rimes on Napster. Who would've thought that Kid Rock wasn't an industry cog?
Forget about the music-for-money; Napster's strength instead lies in its extras, which includes recommendations that are based on the artists that you select. Xtina is three recommendations away from Barry Manilow, Sheryl Crow is two clicks away from Bette Midler and R. Kelly is one away from Jacko. Also, the radio stations are themselves interesting side-material. There's Brazilian rhythms and "eclectic downtempo." There's a station devoted entirely to cover songs, both good (Flaming Lips' "Can't Get You Out of My Head") and bad (Britney's "I Love Rock N Roll"), and there's another devoted entirely to one-hit wonders better left forgotten.
With all of this and Fuzz and the message boards, Napster is slowly trying to recreate everything it once had--except this time for profit. Other than the deterrence of the music Nazi, the RIAA, these extras are the only other things that will entice a music aficionado away from the musical wilderness of free file-sharing programs. The cat's back in the bag and this is definitely a good first step in the right direction.
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