iTunes vs. Napster

I’ve owned my 60Gb iPod for quite a while now so it made a lot of sense to buy into the whole iTunes thing.  But just this week I found myself on Napster and signed up for their free trial, on the basis that I had little to lose.  And I’m really glad that I gave it a shot because it’s opened me up to a huge amount of music.

What’s it like using iTunes?
I use iTunes to manage my music collection.  I’ve ripped all of my CD’s to high quality MP3 format, and along with about a hundred songs I’ve bought off iTunes (some of which I’ve now upgraded to iTunes Plus), and with a handful of podcasts completely filled my 60Gb iPod.  Fortunately I recently got a new PC with a big hard drive, so it’s not a problem synching the whole lot.  Previously I used an external hard drive that I turned off when I wasn’t using it and iTunes never really got the hang of it.

iTunes isn’t great though.  It’s never completely clear what it’s doing with my music collection, and every now and then it messes up.

In terms of discovering new music I’d rate the iTunes store as just average.  You get 30 seconds to sample each track, and really, it’s all laid out in such a way that I rarely feel enticed to explore beyond the front page.  If I want to find out about a band I might as well go to Wikipedia or Amazon.

How does Napster compare?
My free trial allows unlimited online access to something like 3 million songs, which to all intents and purposes is just about all of the material I’m likely to need.  Certainly it looks that way right now.

The thing that makes a difference is that you don’t just get a 30 second sample, you get to drag a whole album into your playlist and hear the whole thing.  The only downside so far has been that I don’t have enough hours in the day to sit and listen to all the material that’s available to me.  It’s like being let loose in the biggest HMV in the world, and just playing music to your heart’s content.

On the first day I discovered the joys of yodelling music.  There was an article on Radio 4 a while back expounding on the joys of yodelling, so I listened to a bunch of stuff.  When it started I was asking myself why I bother with all the music I currently listen to, but after about five tracks I’d reached the point where if I heard another yodel I was going to scream.  So, clear my playlist.  That was great, find a genre, listen to as much as I want, tire of it, then move on.  I wasn’t left with a song in iTunes that I never wanted to listen to, or worse, a whole CD that would gather dust.

I then discovered John Jorgenson, and the many artists he’s worked with.  I originally knew of him from the David Lee Roth album of bluegrass versions of Van Halen songs, but it turns out he’s got an impressive and diverse catalogue of partnerships with a load of great musicians.  Just one example is the track he appears on with Peter Frampton.  Nice.

Last night I discovered Thrash, in all its guises.  It’s a genre that begs you to discover the extremes.  How fast, how heavy, how insane can it get.   And I discovered what seems like a couple of end stop within the genre, in the form of Slayer and Slipknot.  While I’ve known about them before, Napster gave me the chance to really test out their repertoire.  They really are heavy, each in their own way.  I also liked System Of A Down, and liked the new Megadeth album so much I went out and bought it today.  And that’s one of the things about this digital revolution.  It doesn’t make me buy less music, it makes me buy more!

Today, aside from listening to a huge bundle of Slayer I discovered Kings Of Leon, who I somehow have managed to completely miss out on so far.

In summary, while I’m sticking with iTunes because I have to, my new favourite is Napster
The point for me is that iTunes is great for managing an existing collection of music.  Napster is great for opening you up to a whole new world of music.  And for me, I really don’t care about the cost.  Since it’s only £9.99 a month I’m planning to stick with it.