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Napster App released (No need for Spotify in the US?)

U

ultravioletfly

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 18, 2007
113
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Having never used Napster (http://appshopper.com/music/napster®), I am very intrigued by the release of this Napster app. Has anyone used the subscription service? Is the sound quality OK? One cool feature seems to be that you can store songs for offline listening.

Seems almost too good to be true, but I'll give it a shot.
Louis
 
I've subscribed in the past. It's a fine service. If I remember right the mp3's were atleast 256k. THat was a few years ago though. I bet it's increased if not lossless.

The Real Raphsody app is out as well and I think the subscription price is similar.

I love subscription music, and I wish Itunes would come up with something. I still use a Zune for music for their subscription service. It's $15 a month but you get to keep 10 songs a month. Although I'm am slowly but surely building my iTunes catalog too.
 
This app is not working correctly. I signed up for Napster on the monthly plan. I saved an album for offline use and it only saved the 30 second previews of each song.

No way to cancel the service through the app either. Cancelled online. That was the shortest subscription that I ever had. I may try it again if the app gets updated but paying $10 just to be able to save 30 second previews of songs isn't what I expected.

EDIT: After reading up on the subscription plan, not ALL music is available on the iPhone $10 subscription plan and that is why allot of music is only available as thirty second previews. I don't think $10 is worth the price if half of the music that I am searching for is not available unless I purchase it.
 
Having tried the app for a few hours, I will say this thing is filled to the brim with annoying bugs that render the app almost useless.

1. While playing music, if you get any sort of outside notification sounds (such as receiving email, or IM chime, or even keyboard clicks within the app itself!), Napster jumps the volume to the standard line-out volume. Once this occurs, you can't change the volume down with the buttons or within the app. You have to pause the song and unpause to access the volume controls again.

2. I've saved a few albums, but for some reason, after one or two songs, playback will just stop, often in the middle of a song.

3. Much of the Napster library is composed of "Buy-only" tracks. For those tracks, you can only listen to or download a 30-sec preview.

4. This is the big one: Sound quality sucks big time. Highs are easily distorted, and everything else is muddled. I'm guessing 64kbps bit-rate or something.

Promising, but feels like an alpha project at this point. I might use it for the next week (free trial), but I would definitely not pay $10/mo. until they come up with an even slightly better experience.
 
ultravioletfly said:
Having tried the app for a few hours, I will say this thing is filled to the brim with annoying bugs that render the app almost useless.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. Sounds like I'll be sticking with Rhapsody. (Unless I'm convinced otherwise during the 7 day trial of Napster.)

At least now we have a Rhapsody competitor with a comparable library of tracks. (Rdio is out of the question, because it's missing a lot of my favorite albums.)
 
I'm trying this right now with 'Napster Light' (free, no subscription. I used to have one but cancelled it years ago).

I can't save the songs but other than that it's working just fine.
 
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