In my detailed review of Napster on launch day this Wednesday I didn’t fully explain Napster’s download feature, which does set them a bit more apart from Rhapsody. If you are a paid Premium member ($9.95 a month) then you can download the full songs that are available for streaming on their service to your computer to be able to play offline at 128K, instead of the 96k that the streams run at. Below is a screenshot showing the DRM licensing properties for these songs:

The buzz on the Napster messageboards is that as long as premium members keep paying the monthly fee, the DRM will be renewed before 12/13/2003. So, actually, Napster is giving users a chance to listen should their streaming service be down for some reason. This doesn’t change my grade of a B, because that grade was mostly based on their music selection at the time I reviewed it (which continues to improve, btw), but it certainly does add another dimension to their service. Very cool!

Comments about Napster 2.0:
Dave stopped by from Dave’s Chalkboard and writes: “They are going to have to do a better job than that to win me over from iTunes for songs for my iPod.”

Dave also writes at his blog in Napster 2.0 Review update: Now is Napster’s music player any good. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t been able to tell. I tried to put some of my songs on a different computer into Napster’s player, only to find that Napster’s player wouldn’t show me computers on my LAN.

Dave, should you stop by and read this (I trackbacked this entry to help out), you might want to try the Napster plug-in for Windows Media Player. You can see it running in the screenshot above. Very handy and allows you to skip using Napster’s interface and use Windows Media Player instead.

Napster 2.0 and other Online Music Articles
news.com: Legal Napster up and running
BBC News: Napster still has the edge
TechTV: New Napster Busts Out of Beta
ZDNet UK: RealPlayer Chief says it now has 250,000 online music subscribers

More blogging about legal online music services
Napster 2.0 goes live from Ars Technica
smackmybishop: “kenny freaking loggins? uninstalled.”
Jason recaps his invite to the Napster 2.0 party at The House of Blues and Koga thinks maybe his invite got lost in the mail (j/k)
Daniel thinks Napster is a sellout and modified the Napster logo
Ken Edwards, a fellow Blogcritic who reports from the Mac perspective in his blog, points to my Napster review, thanks Ken!
Jennifer from Canada is endlessly frustrated that Napster doesn’t say upfront that it is only for US residents