Is the end near... Again?!
Written: Feb 11 '01 (Updated Feb 11 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Free music service with every song you can think of available on it.
Cons: Broadband oriented service, no security toward files, controversial.
The Bottom Line: Controversy and big files can’t keep a good Napster down. See why people just can’t get enough of this divisive music sharing service.
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| kfj001's Full Review: Napster |
Ah, Napster. If you don’t know what it is, you have literally had your head up your @$$ for the past year and a half.
But, that doesn’t negate my duties as an educator.
What is Napster?
Napster is a client & server program for Windows that serves as an “intermediary” that scans your PC for MP3 files (MPEG1 Layer 3 Audio) and begins to form a “list”.
That list of MP3’s on your PC is then transmitted to a central server (in this case, the Napster Server), which catalogs your MP3 files, indicates you are online, and have the ability to begin transmitting some of your MP3 files upon request.
In essence, it allows you to “share” music you have downloaded, converted from other sources or, yes, even stolen with other people on the Napster service.
The controversy
The fact that you as an individual can redistribute music without the permission or sanction of the music industry, or the artist that made the song. You are giving copies out to your friends, (even if they aren’t your friends) and the Music industry is loosing money.
The ethics of such an action are often perceived as victimless, because the music industry has been labeled a “multi-billion dollar industry”. And to an extent, they are correct.
In any case if you believe that, or otherwise, it really doesn’t matter to this review. You make your own moral decisions.
What you CAN do with it
Because Napster is a real-time service, all content is dynamic. There are tens of thousands of songs available on the service from all of the people using it, if you use Napster, your sharing songs, period.
Odd songs, new songs, old songs are all (or not) available on the service from different people “logged on” to the network. And that subsequently provides a massive collection of music, in virtually every genre available under the sun.
Each song is created (compressed) and maintained by the owner of the file. This can lead to a somewhat problematic, and inherent problem in Napster.
Bandwidth Cholesterol
Multimedia is not “efficient” by its very definition. It is a bandwidth hog, even with compression. Audio is a “big fat file”, and MPEG is an efficient way of compressing it, at the cost of obvious (and sometimes less obvious) quality.
This is because MPEG is a “lossy codec”, meaning that audio quality is what is sacrificed to save space.
When you find a file on Napster, it is often encoded at 128kbps/44khz. This is near CD quality, but a five-minute song ends up being about 4 megabytes. This is chump size for people with Cable modems & DSL connections. Do you have a cable modem? Do you have a DSL modem? Probably not, you probably have a regular 56k modem that can download at ~5.6kbps total.
This makes downloading bulk music a lengthy chore (on modems).
Another immediate problem is Napster “servers” are other peoples home PC’s. Home computers aren’t data server quality that is why people spend tens of thousands of dollars on quality computer hardware to set up “dot-coms”.
Peoples home PC’s reboot, lockup, “multitask”. Each of those tasks makes serving MP3 files slower because the computer is doing something else (or nothing at all in the event of a lockup.)
This makes some files, and some users PC’s are inaccessible for a while. Which is really just an inconvenience.
Secondly, people have to undertake the task of maintaining their collections. When ripping audio CD’s (removing the music from a CDROM), they have to encode the audio to MP3 format to exchange it over Napster (it also saves on hard drive space). They can use the 320KBPS format, which doesn’t sacrifice any audible quality in the format, but that file size is virtually impossible to transmit over standard phone lines in any short or decent amount of time.
So, they encode at 128kpbs, or 160kpbs to accommodate the “audio quality” over file size. The result? Indistinguishable from an audio CD. Or so you would think.
The truth is that really good speakers can generate the tinny, echo quality caused by MP3 encoding. Granted, these tinny, echo like sound effects (typically herd while listening to high-pitch music) are mostly inaudible to most peoples PC speakers, and most headphones. But the problem is that people who are “audiophiles” will notice the tinny echo “artifracts” and be unhappy with them.
MP3 is not a professional’s audio choice.
Viruses are also a possible problem. Now, if you have Napster, and an anti-virus program, you need not worry, but unprotected PC’s going around, downloading MP3 files are at terrible risk for a phenomena which thankfully hasn’t shut down the service yet (a horrible, wide-spread virus outbreak). Napster isn’t the most secure service in the world.
Napster also retrieves “client information” from their ‘subscribers’ (although the service is FREE). The information is, what else but… MARKETING INFORMTION!
That’s right, the company collects e-mail addresses, age, locale and other “demographic” information from their clientele to assist in, well, that hasn’t been made very clear by Napster, but we can only hope it hasn’t been uses in “unholy ways”. But hey, the record companies do it too, so there’s some common ground.
Summary
If your PC is on a quality modem connection, or a broadband one, has ant virus software AND a user who loves freebies, then Napster is your music service. Although your favorite song may, or may not be on the service, you can bet that the “odd” titles are probably there.
Now, just get on and get your stuff before they “close down”… (Yeah, right.)
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
kfj001
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Member: Kyle
Location: Buffalo, NY, USA
Reviews written: 138
Trusted by: 30 members
About Me:
"Testing", "Destroying", it's all just one big, gray line to me.
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