Vitals

• Type: Software-based store/Subscription
• Number of titles: 500,000
• Format: WMA
• Player: Samsung Napster (plus others)
• Website: http://www.napster.com
• Comments: Excellent for teens; community element; good integration and interface but no ripping

Napster 2.0, now a fully legal music business, retains some of the conveniences of the original renegade Napster. The brand name launches it into second place after iTunes in number of downloaded tracks, but you should look at it for its community elements and polished interface.

Napster's solid music service lets you download tracks in WMA format, which you can play on just about any WMA-supported portable player. Here's what users can also do.

• Download one of about 500,000 songs for 99 cents per track on a Windows PC. Whole albums will generally cost $9.99.
  
  
• Take advantage of the Napster community features for an additional $9.95 per month. These include unlimited streaming and music downloads and streaming radio. You can also discuss music on the message boards. However, if you end your subscription, you only get to keep the songs you purchased.
  
  
• Integrate downloaded tracks with your existing MP3 collections.
  
  
• Send downloaded music to friends and browse other Napster members' MP3 collections.

Although you can't use Napster to rip CDs to you hard drive, you can use it to burn CDs of your downloaded tracks. The convenient prepaid music-download cards give you 15 songs for $14.85.

At this time, only Samsung Napster MP3 players integrate with Napster 2.0, which kinda sucks. You can transfer your Napster tracks to other WMA players using Windows Media Player.

We found 20 songs in the Billboard Top 25 on Napster, and the genre/artist-based searches were overall very successful. Although other services bested Napster in the number of Rolling Stones tracks, Napster dominated in searches for John Coltrane and Michael Jackson. Plus, we were able to find the electronic band Air. (IMS users were out of luck.)

Official word from TechTV Labs

If your kid is a teenager or college student, buy them a yearlong subscription. As one of the premier services for WMA/Windows Users, Napster offers a wonderful interface, lots of personalization, a robust community element, and a great selection of songs. Unfortunately, you'll need to use another app if you want to rip. Also, the Samsung Napster player integration isn't as convenient as the iPod/iTunes integration, mainly because the Napster player isn't as good.