'Napster To Go' Offers Alternative to iTunes -- If You Keep On Paying
Apple's iTunes online music-download store dominates the digital music market. It has brushed off threats from multiple competitors. But now, a new type of online music service is launching what may be the stiffest test Apple Computer has faced in music.
This new service is called Napster To Go . It's a fresh iteration of the Napster legal music service, and it offers users a completely different model for buying and playing music, a model that Apple can't match today.
With iTunes, you buy new songs for 99 cents each. Once the songs are downloaded to a Windows or Macintosh computer, you own them forever and can do what you like with them, within certain limits. You can store them on multiple PCs, and copy them to an unlimited number of iPod music players. This has worked so well that Apple has sold more than 300 million songs.
But there's a downside to Apple's system: If you're a heavy music purchaser, buying thousands of new songs will cost thousands of dollars.
Napster To Go also allows you to download songs and to copy them onto a portable player. But Napster To Go doesn't charge for each song; in fact, Napster doesn't really sell them to you. Instead, it rents the music, for a monthly subscription fee of $14.95. As long as you pay the monthly fee, you can download as many tracks as you want. So, if you're inclined to download thousands of tracks, you're not out thousands of dollars.
For some time now, Napster and other online services, like RealNetworks' Rhapsody and Yahoo's Musicmatch, have offered subscription services that allowed unlimited downloads to a PC -- but not a portable player -- for a monthly fee. What's new about Napster To Go is that these songs can be copied to compatible portable players from companies including Creative Labs, iRiver and Dell. That makes the service a stronger competitor to Apple's iTunes and iPod combination.
Until the addition of portability, Napster and the other subscription plans had attracted a solid audience, but they hadn't been able to mount a major challenge to Apple. Now, with the addition of portability, Napster believes it can attract a large audience of music fans who want to try large amounts of music without a big out-of-pocket expense. RealNetworks and other subscription companies are expected to add a similar portability option in the coming months.
Apple has scoffed at the rental/subscription model. But if it takes off, the computer maker may be forced to respond with its own subscription service.
I've been testing Napster To Go with one of the best compatible players, the iRiver H10. The Napster software used to access the service isn't as well designed, or as simple to use, as iTunes; and none of the compatible players is as good as an iPod. But the combination worked pretty well.
There is one huge downside to the Napster approach. If you stop paying your monthly fee, the music dies. The song files will become inert and unplayable unless Napster is able to verify that you continue to be a subscriber in good standing. In fact, you have to log onto the service with a PC at least once a month and plug in your portable player so that Napster can verify your paid status.
This means that, if you build a huge music collection through Napster, you could lose all of it -- every single song, going back to when you started -- if you ever halt the monthly payments, however high they may go in the future. If you want to keep a song permanently, in the Apple fashion, you have to pay the same 99 cents a track Apple charges, on top of your $14.95 monthly fee. (Napster will sell you bulk credits for buying songs permanently that can lower the cost to around 79 cents a track.)
There are some other downsides to Napster To Go . Downloaded songs can be stored only on up to three computers, not the five machines Apple allows; and each PC can copy music to only three portable players, not the unlimited number in Apple's system. You can't burn rented songs to a CD; you have to first buy them for 99 cents.
Napster does have one nice feature iTunes lacks: It can synchronize your downloaded music among several computers, so they all have the same songs.
But Napster can be far more confusing to use than iTunes. Not all songs can be rented. Some can only be purchased. Others can only be rented, and not purchased.
The Napster software is also clumsier than iTunes. You can't see the status of downloads or of song transfers to a portable player without switching to a separate window. Searching for music, and creating playlists, is more awkward than in iTunes.
Also, in my tests of Napster To Go on three different PCs, I ran into repeated problems transferring rented songs to the iRiver player. Several times the transfer process choked, and I had to quit and start over. In one case, I received a mystifying error message that read: "I/O operation has been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request."
I have never had such problems with iTunes.
Still, Napster To Go offers a real alternative to Apple's offering. It will be interesting to see how the market responds.
“Napster To Go”挑战苹果iTunes
苹果电脑(Apple Computer) iTunes网上音乐下载商店一直称霸数码音乐市场。它已经扫除了众多竞争对手的威胁。不过最近，有一种新型的网上音乐服务正在发起一轮挑战，这也许是苹果在音乐领域面临的有史以来最严峻的一次考验。
这种叫Napster To Go的新型服务是Napster合法音乐下载服务的最新版本，为用户提供一种全新的音乐购买和播放模式，这种模式是苹果目前还难以企及的。
用iTunes购买歌曲每首价钱是99美分，一旦这些歌曲被下载到你的Windows或Macintosh操作系统上就永远归你所有了，你可以任意处理这些歌曲，但也有某些限制。你可以存储在多台个人电脑上，也可以拷贝到无限多个iPod音乐播放器上。这种方式非常有效可行，苹果公司因此卖出了3亿多首歌曲。
不过，苹果的这套系统有一个弱点：如果你是个大量购买的用户，那么购买几千首新歌就会花掉几千美元。
Napster To Go也允许用户下载歌曲并拷贝到便携播放器上，但不针对每首歌收费。事实上，Napster并不是真正地“出售”音乐，而是“出租”音乐，月租费为14.95美元。只要用户支付月租费，就可以无限量地下载歌曲。因此，如果你喜欢大量下载歌曲，用Napster To Go就无需支付高额费用。
一段时间以来，Napster和其他一些线上音乐服务--如RealNetworks的Rhapsody和雅虎公司(Yahoo)的Musicmatch--都提供订户式音乐服务，只要支付一定的月订费，用户就可以无限量下载歌曲到个人电脑上--但不能下载到便携播放器上。而Napster To Go的新颖之处在于下载的音乐可以被拷贝到兼容的便携播放器上，如Creative Labs、iRiver和戴尔(Dell Inc.)等公司生产的播放器。这一点使得Napster To Go比苹果的iTunes＋iPod组合更具有竞争力。
在把下载至便携播放器的功能增加进来之前，Napster和其他一些公司的订户式网上音乐服务吸引了一群忠实用户，但对苹果一直不构成重大威胁。增加了这项功能之后，Napster相信能吸引大批想试听大量音乐作品、但又不想花费太多的音乐发烧友。未来几个月，RealNetworks和一些提供订户式服务的公司预计也会增加相似的功能。
苹果曾对这种月租模式嗤之以鼻，不过一旦这种消费方式发展起来，这家电脑制造巨头也许会被迫做出回应，也推出自己的订户式服务。
我用一款兼容性最好的播放器iRiver H10来测试Napster To Go。单独来看，用以连接下载服务的Napster软件无论从设计还是使用的简易性方面都不如iTunes；也没有一款兼容播放器比iPod更出色，不过它们搭配在一起倒是非常不错。
Napster的服务模式有一个很大的缺陷：如果你停止支付月租费，那么下载的音乐就没用了，音乐文档将无法启动和播放，直到Napster确认你仍是它的订户。事实上，你一个月至少要用个人电脑登陆到Napster服务一次，并插入便携播放器，以便Napster验证你的租金支付情况。
这意味著，假如你通过Napster收集了大量的音乐作品，如果停止交月租费--不管将来可能涨到多高，你就会丢掉全部的收藏成果，一首不留，又回到开始时的状态。如果你想永久保存一首歌，除了每月14.95美元的月租外，你还需要支付99美分，跟苹果的收费一样。（Napster为永久购买的用户提供可观的优惠，价格可能降到大约79美分一首歌。）
Napster To Go还有其他一些缺点。下载的歌曲最多只能存储在三台电脑上，而苹果的服务允许存到五台电脑上；每台电脑只能把音乐拷贝到三台便携播放器上，而苹果的系统没有限制。此外，你无法把租到的歌曲刻录到光碟上，除非先支付99美分来购买。
Napster的确拥有一个iTunes不具备的特色：你可以在几台电脑上让下载下来的音乐实现同步，这样每台电脑上都是相同的歌曲。
不过Napster可能比iTunes复杂一些。Napster上并不是所有的歌曲都能租订。有些歌曲只能购买，而有的只能租订，不能够买。
Napster软件也比iTunes笨拙一些。你需要切换到另一个单独的视窗才能看到音乐下载或转移到便携播放器上的进展情况。用Napster搜索音乐和创建播放目录也没有iTunes那么灵活。
另外，我在三台不同的电脑上试用Napster To Go时反复遇到相同的问题: 在把下载的歌曲转移到iRiver播放器上时，有好几次转移过程停滞不前，我只好退出重新开始。有一次，我收到一个莫名其妙的错误提醒：“由于线程退出或是应用程式请求，I/O操作失败。”
我在使用iTunes时从来没碰到过这种问题。
但不管怎么说，Napster To Go对苹果的网上音乐服务发起了一次真正的挑战，市场将做何反应，我们拭目以待。
