The Eye

I read this five minutes after I called Napster to cancel my subscription. It wouldn’t have influenced my decision in any way, even though I don’t have a great deal of regard for Best Buy.

When I first got an MP3 player, I thought it would be a good idea. $14.99 gave me access to a whole lot of music, and I didn’t have to fork out 99 cents a tune, like iTunes. Anyway, iTunes is no use for me, as I don’t have and don’t have any plans to buy an iPod. My little Sandisk mp240 was only $38.99 and does me fine. 

Another reason for cancelling Napster was that DRM sucks. I knew that already, the same as most of you surely do, but I thought I’d give it a try anyway. I didn’t really build up much of a Napster library anyway, so the few dozen tunes that will now cease to work aren’t going to cause me to lose any sleep.

It was a pain in the butt playing DRM music on the computers anyway. You can use up to three on an account, but I dislike Windows Media Player, preferring Winamp, which didn’t like playing the Napster stuff, and I use linux machines for the most part anyhow.

I’ve already bought some non DRM music from Amazon, which is a far better proposition, as I can do whatever I want with them, including playing them on any of the computers in the home; the Sandisk, or my Blackberry. The Blackberry is really very useful, as I can get reasonable quality sound via a pair of Motorola HT820 Bluetooth Headphones, and I can also use it as an audio source in the car, as my car audio is AD2P equipped as well. The Blackberry isn’t DRM capable though, and that was the final reason for cancelling the Napster subscription.