Looking For Any Song Ever Made? It's Probably Here!
Written: Jan 05 '01 (Updated Jan 07 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The ability to finding the original song from anywhere between the 50's and now, No logging in ever, Easy to use!
Cons: Slower Internet connections will find the downloads taking a while, A few to many transfer errors!
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| Pandemonium's Full Review: Napster |
For those of you that are not familiar with Napster, it is a service on the Internet that allows you to download MP3 files from other members computers. This service is completely free and legal although, others would disagree on the legal part. Napster is currently being sued by RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for copyright infringements but, it looks like this lawsuit will take forever to see a court room. Some bands (Metallica) have even gone to enough trouble to also sue Napster for this and making it where if you download a song from them, Napster will cancel your membership with them. This is of course for another Epinion so back to Napster itself.
The main purpose for Napster is for members to download MP3 music files from other members computers. When you sign up for Napster (totally free) you will be given a small download of 1.84MB (even though it says 1,840 kb on the site). This is the newest version of Napster (beta 8) for those who have an older version reading this Epinion. Once downloaded, you will have yourself an Internet vehicle through which you will be able to view news about Napster, chat, view your shared files and listen to them in a built in player, search for songs to download, place people in your hot list for fast downloads, view your transferring files, and discover new music (new), and view help. This is where you will do all your work from Napster without ever needing to go to the site itself. Their vehicle (which I call it) is customizable to a point. You change any of the colors you want to give it a new look. To give you an example how big this site is, while I was writing this Epinion I viewed how many users where on Napster and how many shared files were available. There was over 6,500 users sharing over 1 million files at 9:00am.
For those people that are afraid of the thought of someone downloading something straight from your computer I understand this. There is no way for someone from this site to see what is actually on your computer by downloading a song from you. All they can see are your shared files that you indicate what to show. Also, there is no way (that I am aware of) to transport a virus by means of just an MP3 file.
HOME
The first button you will see is the home button. This is where you will see Napster news flashes, featured music which could be anything, a section of their news letter which you can subscribe to if you wish, what's going on, and a please note section. This section will keep you up to date nicely on what's going on at Napster and find some music out there that you maybe didn't know about.
CHAT
You will find 57 rooms of chat for about every type of music there is. You can enter more than one room at a time if you wish and just float back and forth between them. This is something I think they have a great idea on but, they have not thrived to accomplish well. They do not monitor the chats in any way so you know its a kids paradise. You can find some good chat in here from time to time but those times are few. I have a very useful way to use the chats other than chatting. When you enter a room you will see to the right of you a list of the members that are there. On this list you will see the user name, how many files they are sharing, and how fast their Internet connection is. I tend to find a user with a good amount of music and a fairly descent Internet speed, add them to your hot list, and view their entire library. This is an easy way to find someone that may have a lot of music that you like. You can instant message anyone you want but right clicking on their name and hit instant message. If you wish you can ignore anyone you want as well. Other than the chats are just for kids looking to chat with the opposite sex. Also, a good amount of your freaks in here. WARNING. People might instant message you and say "I'm in a band and would love for you to download a song from me and let me know what you think." If they want you to download it from mail don't, it probably will contain something you don't want in the mail. Hints a virus.
MY FILES
When you hit the my files button this will bring up all of your songs you are sharing. With the built in player not only will you be able to play your songs without opening your default player but, it will display the file name, file size, bitrate, frequency, and the length of the song. You can put together a quick play list while you are here and play the songs in continuous play or random play. Also, you can save the play lists you create here on your computer and bring them back whenever you wish. This is not something you should have as your default media player with all the free ones out there (like windows media player 7) but, it's far easier to play your songs from here while you are downloading other songs or chatting so you don't have to open your player up and take up more of your computer resources.
SEARCH
This is where you will look for any song you wish to download. It is fairly easy to use and pretty fast getting results. Basically all you need to do is, type in the artists name and the title of the song (which you can have one or the other and get pretty good results) and hit find it. It will search Napster for what you typed and bring back the results. This is not always perfectly accurate but, you will be happy most of the time. If you can type in both artist name and song title it is right on. But of course, how many songs do we know one or the other from a song way back and can never find it. Now is your chance. This does have advance features in it. You can set it to only show you certain number of bitrates (quality of sound, higher the better), and certain connection speed from 28k to T3, (T3 being the best) and select a number of the ping time (how good of a connection the person has). All of these you can set at least, equal to, or at best. This is a really good feature to narrow down songs that you are going to find a ton of just to get a download that you prefer. I would recommend not setting any of these when you look for songs you doubt you will even see. For example, if you search for a song that you are thinking you will get lucky in finding and have the setting to only see cable or higher and a person has it but with a 56k modem you will not see it. Use your judgment. Another fast tip is, when you are not sure of a songs length click on the length button to sort the songs by length and see what the most common time is. That is most likely the right one. Some people might only get a part of a song or have a different version and you would not know without viewing the songs length or file size. Once you find what you want just double click the one you want and it will automatically go into the transfer section. All together this is a great setup and easy to use. This is where Napster really stands out from the others.
HOT LIST
Hot list is where you put your favorite Napster members that you like to download from or has a library that you want to see again. Just add a name and you will see when that person is on Napster and be able to view their entire music library. When someone is online that you have in your hot list and you ask to see their music it will pull it up in the same manner as it does when you view own files. With the filename, file size, bitrate, frequency, and length. If you choose to download a song from someone's list here just right click on the song and choose download and it will go into the transfer section.
TRANSFER
Here is where all the downloading and uploading will appear. You will see what songs you are downloading from other members with the same stats as you saw in the search and what files are being uploaded from you in the same manner. It will display the rate at which the download or upload is transferring at and the time left. It will also show you what percentage of the song you have and how much of the files MB or kb you have received. If you have a slower Internet connection the average song will take about 30 min or so. With cable or higher it will be around 30 seconds to a minute. If you get a transfer error while doing this (unfortunately this will happen sometimes on slower modems) what you have received will be on your computer. Sometimes a song will be at 99% and bang a transfer error pops up. No worries, just go into your incomplete section (default is windows incomplete) and move the file to your designated folder where your other songs are. It will play as if you had completed the transfer.
DISCOVER
This is a new feature of Napster. Here you can, what they say, discover music. You will be able to explore music and artists that you probably have never heard of. Each week they showcase several songs from new artists. They will have a short description of the artist and links on how to find their music. The prior week will also be at the bottom so you can see those artists in case you missed them.
FINAL THOUGHT
Of course, they have your basic help section to look at if you get stuck. In all this site is just awesome. From the music you can get to the ease of the whole thing. I must warn you, if you have a slower Internet connection, and a music lover, you will find yourself spending a lot of time here building a library due to the time spent on each song. But, you have to admit if you are a music lover it is well worth the time. If you have a smaller hard drive (4GB) you will find your space slowly disappearing. This is the best site of it's kind and totally free. Of course, you can burn these songs on to a CD after you download them to save space on your computer but, they are only supposed to be for personal use. Being a cop I had to say that lol.
I recommend this site to anyone!
Thank you for your time.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Pandemonium
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 in Games |
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Member: D.J.
Location: Still Floating
Reviews written: 90
Trusted by: 145 members
About Me:
In my little corner of Epinions, relaxing, sipping beer, playing a game, listening to music.
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