Thursday marked the much-heralded return of Napster, with a media blowout that looked a lot like the over-hyped product launches from 1999.

Ahh, 1999: the good old days of stealing music. It was then that Napster made its biggest impact -- the year it sparked a file-swapping revolution and drew fire from the recording industry. We all know what happened after that: The company effectively went out of business, and the RIAA declared war on file swappers everywhere.

But today's a new day. People seem genuinely interested in paying a small fee for music, though unabated swapping continues on P2P networks such as KaZaA. Moreover, the music industry is amenable to letting companies such as Napster and Apple distribute songs for a price.

No 'half-ass sound'

Rapper Ludacris attended the Napster 2.0 event and vouched for the benefits of paying for decent tunes.

"It's not like going to another website and illegally downloading and getting some half-ass recording sound," he said. "Basically, sometimes you don't even get the whole song, so this is the right way of doing it."

Another benefit to Napster: It offers the largest catalog of music available yet: 500,000 songs. Apple's iTunes Music Store set the bar high for usability, selection, and price, but Napster's looking to outdo the Mac-only service. Two weeks ago Musicmatch launched its own PC-centric music service, which has impressed critics and reviewers so far.

At Thursday's launch party in New York, Roxio CEO Chris Gorog gave reporters the first tour of Napster 2.0. Roxio, the Silicon Valley-based consumer software company, bought all rights to Napster in a fire sale last year.

"With Napster 2.0 you are going to be able to email your favorite songs to your friends," he said. "You'll be able to share playlists back and forth. It really is quite similar, in that respect, to the original Napster."

Similar indeed, but also very different. How does Napster stack up? Let's take a look.