Broadband and Mobile Phones Have Become Our Avenues to Continuous Music
Through most of the last century can you imagine what would have happened to some poor guy who speculated that someday we would use the same instrument to call our business colleagues and play our favorite music. Yet, most new cell phones can do just that, especially the mobile phones carried by younger people.
And, of course, in the major portion of the 20th century, nobody would have envisioned the Internet. Even into the 1990s, our current Internet speeds with broadband connections would have seemed like a distant dream. Wrong! Ten years later the majority of us are connect to broadband services. High quality streaming music to our computers has moved well beyond the pipe dream stage long ago–well, I guess, it hasn’t really been all that long.
Napster, started as a free trading music set, but it has transformed itself into the holder of the largest music catalog on the entire Internet–over seven million titles and still growing. While it is not free, as it was in the wild days of the early Internet, it is still an amazing bargain. The site provides what is widely regarded as the greatest bargain for music fans with a three month introductory subscription, with renewals at the same low rates. Three months will give you a good sense of what the service has to offer, and I strongly suspect that you’ll decide to renew. A lot of people have maintained a membership for years.
For the widely recommended three month plan you get five download credits per month plus bonus credits. Included in the plan is the reason that most people subscribe in the first place–unlimited (!) streaming music. You can listen to the entire catalogs of your favorite artists or, if you prefer, entire albums of a variety of artists. There are also over a thousand interactive, genre playlists. They even have a streaming radio station.
The music that you select to download as part of your subscription can be played on any MP3 device, including a number of lesser know brands plus the extremely popular Ipod and Zune players. In fact, if you cell phone has this option, you can even carry the music you’ve downloaded from Napster on that, as well.
With your three month membership downloads, you receive unrestricted rights, so you can put your music onto various of your players. You can even burn a CD for yourself.
Any musical genre you can think of is well represented. I’m sure you’ll find your favorite on the list, unless you are like me and listen to music from a wide variety of genres. Among those genres are rock, pop, classical, R&B, musical soundtracks, Christian, jazz, comedy, and the list goes on.
All of this is just $15 for the three months of delightful musical saturation at Napster.com. Face it, that’s cheaper than a fast food lunch for three.