the new napster

[JackSpratts]

just signed up and logged in under one of my old napster nics (jackspratts). went right to "track" and chose bruce springsteen's "new york city serenade." lots of strings, acoustic guitar and piano, soft and loud singing and a pretty good audio test for dynamic range and frequency response.

by now you all know that napster is a free service. you can listen to anything they have up to five times. it's not a download in the strict sense (although of course it is) but something more like instant request internet radio and in the business it’s called a stream.

the verdict is mixed. the convenience factor is unquestionably high. open up your browser (i used opera and firefox with no issues) and in seconds you're listening to anything and everything. the price is zero. the paranoia issues are null and the five-times limit is not exactly a crushing burden (it auto repeats and at least in one case way more than 5x). which leaves...the sound. funny thing that. not all bad for a low bit stream. clean, ok presence, decent highs and lows - except during crescendos - then it goes way over the harsh limit and it almost, hurts. going back to new york city serenade and the first third of the song, coming out of my thinkpad and into my sony phones it's good. not great, but good. then, as the boss ramps it up the flaws begin to intrude upon the experience and quite frankly, spoil the mood. fish lady! ouch.

as background it'll work a lot better…it's just that as any dj knows it's hard to play cuts without planting yourself in front of your box, and that means the sound is right there too. if napster wants to get the most out of this model they're going to have to increase the bitrate and smooth out the stream, otherwise people will try it a few times and pass.

as a concept free is about as good as it gets in the (admittedly compromised) online music delivery business, but with just a little tweaking it can be a serious player, and in areas where users have handheld boxes running opera mini-browsers in wi-fi saturated cities it could be dominant. until then it will be an "almost there" also ran among serious listeners of music, although i’m sure many people will run this often, particularly in noisier environments like work and school.

is "napster" back? no, it may never be what it was. but this company, and this service, is, right now, as close to that promise as it has ever come, and over the next few days, a lot of us will be signing on, and playing long, and thinking about what almost was.

jack.