With that done, I bought a song. But instead of the track just downloading, I was greeted with a pop-up window that required my confirmation of the purchase (no way to turn this off, it seems, and no equivalent of the One-Click ordering system used by Amazon and Apple).
Thus confirmed, the song began to download. Napster downloads need to be added to iTunes manually. This is a slightly more involved process than with AmazonMP3, which has a helper application to automatically add songs to iTunes, and iTunes itself, which is obviously tightly integrated.
The songs themselves are as expected, and include album artwork where it is available.
Still, the process of using the store and getting music to your computer is more cumbersome than expected or necessary.
A Good Idea, But…
In some ways, the thinking behind the Napster MP3 store makes sense: they already offer a subscription service for users who want that experience, why not also offer an a la carte store for users who want to be able to buy a few tracks at a time?
While that thinking seems sound, the experience of actually using the Napster MP3 store is so unpleasant as to undermine its goals. A store like this might have been acceptable to users 3-5 years ago (though even iTunes and eMusic were better then), but at this stage in the maturation of the digital music marketplace, it’s hard to imagine it catching on, especially since it only offers music, not podcasts, movies, TV or games as iTunes does.
Given the two major competitors in the space already, the launch of the store without any real differentiating features to give it an edge seems, at best, ill-conceived and unlikely to attract many customers. Just like a former revolutionary trying to sell an insurance policy.
