Napster Launches Portable Subscription Service

Napster has officially launched Napster To Go, the first portable music subscription service. For just $14.95 a month, the service, which uses Windows Media PlaysForSure technology, lets subscribers download an unlimited amount of music from Napster's 1 million song collection and transfer it to compatible portable music players. Users can play downloaded music on their desktop PCs and portable devices as long as they remain subscribers. Portable devices from companies such as Creative, iRiver, and Samsung support the new service. Like other online music services, Napster will continue to offer tracks for $0.99 each, but the new service gives customers another option. Napster is aggressively going after Apple Computer's Apple iTunes Music Store service with this new offering and is using TV spots that point out the cost of filling up an Apple iPod using the iTunes Music Store compared with the cost of using Napster To Go with a compatible device. We're both fairly big music fans and the new service, for a monthly cost about the same as the price of a new CD, lets us maintain our music libraries with an enormous amount of music that we can update and expand on a daily basis. Choice is good, especially when you realize that your musical tastes are going to change over time