May 3, 2006

Free Napster’s Annoying Catalog Gaps

Pleased to see Napster’s new free service, I sent my brother a link to Vitalic’s OK Cowboy, since I hadn’t had a chance to play it for him during our last visit.  He wrote back to say that he could still only get 30 second samples.  Being the little brother that I am, I simply took this as evidence that Napster’s service was not yet idiot-proof. I wrote back remarking on the lopsided way that intelligence can be distributed amongst siblings.

But I should have known better.  Contrary to what I said in my last post, not every song in Napster’s catalog is available for full length playback.  My brother quickly ran into another gap in his next search. Now customers will have to check four different attributes on every song: free streaming, available for a la carte purchase, Napster Unlimited accessible, ready To Go. You’ll likely find all possible combinations.

What a nuisance.  Napster’s new free streaming is still a potentially huge announcement, mostly because I think Yahoo and Rhapsody will do it even better in a matter of months.  But even they probably will have these gaps, as they’re a current problem in all subscription services.

* Filed by Derek Slater at 2:28 am under General news
* 1 Comment

One Response to “Free Napster’s Annoying Catalog Gaps”

  1. Hello
    May 19th, 2006 | 7:24 pm

    Hi
    These are recording contract issues.
    They are constantly negotiating for new material but cant always get everything.
    I would not count on Rhapsody or Yahoo getting the same deal because this was something Napster negotiated with the RIIA for, then again if Napster catches on with this maybe they will
    : )