A Look a the Napster to Go Subscription Service

At the mention of Napster, immediately your mind thinks about illegal downloading, RIAA, lawsuits and possible computer viruses. This is what the past of Napster is filled with. Yet, today, Napster has become one of the top subscription music services.

Most of us listen to music. It seems to be a part of our very make-up. Usually we turn to the radio, more often lately, though, we listen to our MP3 players or CDs. For those who work at computer stations or spend large amounts of time with a computer, music downloaded onto a computer is more mainstream than ever.

The problem with loading music is the fear of lawsuits from the recording industry. In recent years they have decided to crack down on pirated music. This is a real concern as pirating music is stealing. There are, though, many avenues to legally download music. There are many sites, such as iTunes, Wal-Mart, Yahoo, Real, and AOL, to name a few, which sell download of songs at less than one dollar. These songs can then be burned to CD or transferred to an MP3 player. You also have the opportunity to download complete albums, usually at two-thirds the price of buying one in the store.

An issue that arises from this is the fact that most MP3 players today will hold anywhere from 150 to 3000 songs. It doesn't take much to realize that could get rather costly. Plus, with new songs being published all the time, you'd have to continually download new songs to keep your playlist fresh. Enter subscription music.

Subscription music sites offer the ability to listen to new music without having to download it to your computer. You can select a playlist of new music to stream to your computer while you work. These generally cost about $5-10 per month. Some of these sites even let you download the music to your computer, but not to burn or transfer it, so the listening is not affected by bandwidth limitation. The problem of transfer still remains, though.