For many, the name Napster still evokes memories of the carefree early days of music downloading, when songs were free and illegal, but nobody seemed to mind. Those days, of course, didn't last long, with the service being effectively shut down by pressure from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It was later re-launched as a legal download service, but never quite regained the sort of attention it had in its previous life.
Now, the site is being re-launched yet again as an MP3 download store designed to directly take on the competition from Amazon and Apple.
Apple's iTunes is, of course, the reigning leader in the music download space. Lately, though, online music buyers have been rebelling against the restrictive copy protection that Apple still forces on many of its tracks, and the proprietary format that only really works on Apple's iPods isn't helping, either. Apple last year launched a DRM-free store last year -- DRM- or copyright-free means that the tracks can be played on any MP3 player -- but the majority of the iTunes offerings still have copy restrictions. Similarly, Amazon launched its amazonmp3 service last year, featuring songs in the industry-standard MP3 format and no copy protection.
Now, Napter is also offering MP3 downloads free of copy protection, with most tracks priced at $.99, or $9.95 per album, which is slightly higher than Amazon's offerings. Even so, Amazon can't compare to Napster's six million copyright-free tracks available for download right away, which makes it the world's largest MP3 store. The two services will surely keep competing, which is good news for consumers, and it remains to be seen what iTunes will do to keep up. [Source: AOL News]
