Super Bowl commercials are supposed to be indicative of advertising themes and corporate messages for that year. While some commercials are just a waste of $2.4 million (this year's average 30-second commercial fee), occasionally commercials fire the first salvo of competition.
Consider the Napster 2.0 ads during Sunday's Super Bowl. According to advertisements, Napster costs only $10 a month for unlimited downloads and $5 more to transfer these downloads to a portable music player of your choice.
Napster claims to be a revolution in online music. Instead of paying 99 cents a track, such as one does with iTunes, Napster charges a $10 monthly flat fee for all the music you desire.
These Windows Media Audio-protected music files allow you to download and play them on your computer, but song encryption prevents sharing or using without the subscription. Think of the service as something in between a radio station and an MP3. Since most people use their computers as their source of music, this system works nicely. Napster CEO Chris George has been quoted as saying, "Napster To Go will change the music industry forever."
But is Napster truly revolutionary or is it just a different marketing scheme? How does its service differ from iTunes? Let's compare four ways: sound quality, music selection, pricing scheme and user software.
iTunes: iTunes provides a massive library in high-quality audio coding format. More important than a broad selection, iTunes has a thoroughly current selection of music. Their music catalog does a great job of balancing mainstream music with independent labels and up-and-coming artists.
The "listeners also bought" feature is one of the most beneficial services iTunes provides. While other services (Napster) provide this option, the iTunes software makes it easy to use and a great way to branch out your musical tastes. With this feature, I've found great music that I would have never discovered on my own.
The free user software is intuitive and stable. The iTunes player is good enough to be your everyday music jukebox. Playlists are easy to operate, radio stations connect at decent quality and the entire experience is pleasant.
iTunes' pricing isn't very pleasant. True, it's cheaper than buying CDs - the average album costs just $10 on iTunes and you can use the music on five different computers, but the per-track fees really add up. One of the basic appeals of online music is the ability to pick out a few tracks from several albums. If the bulk of the savings comes through entire album purchases, that pricing system punishes the user's pickiness.
Napster: Someone should tell the Napster CEO that his subscription service isn't so revolutionary. Services such as PressPlay attempted the same thing years ago and met with failure. Why? There wasn't any way to burn music or transfer it to a MP3 player. So revolutionary must mean, "We added support for portable music."
As a long-time iTunes user, I was skeptical of Napster. I had used subscription services such as eMusic before, and its song selection and the sound quality disappointed me. Certainly, it offers good recording artists, but it never took long for me to run out of music to download. The limited supply and lack of library updates made me worry that I would be paying a monthly fee and not have anything worthwhile to download.
While eMusic failed, Napster 2.0 didn't let me down. After using Napster for a month, I've downloaded almost six gigabytes of music. The vast majority was music that I always liked, but never wanted to pay $15 an album. This works out great for me, since I listen to an album repeatedly then rarely listen to it again. I delete the album and then find something else. For the albums that I truly love, I can pay the 99 cents per-track fee and burn it onto CDs or transfer it to my iPod.
While Napster's pricing is a winner, its song management software is horrible. Clumsy and disorganized, I spend a lot of time lost and irritated with the system. Even the search feature doesn't produce desired results. Since Napster uses the WMA encryption, my only choices for audio players are Windows Media Player or Napster.
Additionally, the sound quality isn't as good as iTunes. Napster encodes music at 128 kb/s while iTunes is 160kb/s. With headphones, the difference is noticeable.
So, what's the bottom line? iTunes provides more songs at a higher quality
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