I've signed up for a free 2 week trial of Napster. I do not plan on keeping it.
Here's the deal: for 10 dollars a month ($15 if you want to use a portable device) you can download an unlimited number of available tracks from the website. The tracks are DRMed, so that if you let your subscription lapse, you end up with nothing. You are renting music, in essence.
I believe this business model will fail for many reasons. One is that theft is much too easy. Which executives think DRM technology actually works, I don't know, but they must have some fairly lousy consultants. Why was DVD-Jon able to crack CSS so easily? Because, of course, all hardware and software capable of decoding DVD signals for display by definition have the necessary decoding information. One simply has to retrieve it and apply it. This is precisely how Fairtunes works to crack ITunes files, and undoubtedly how the eventual WMA crack will work. In the meantime, a user just needs a program that records a digital audio stream like Tunebite. But again, this works because the end user has to, one way or another, be able to decode the stream. It's conceptually impossible to lock down media for display on a user's system.
Another reason it will fail is that music, as opposed to film, can be divided, compressed considerably, and people are used to owning large collections of it (whereas they are used to just renting films). To force them into a model where at the end they have nothing to show for their money simply won't go.
On the implementation side the service is even worse. Files are encoded in constant bitrate 128kbps WMAs, which is woefully low quality. For any tracks with acoustic instruments it's really unacceptable, especially when considering the quality of ITunes AAC or mp3s that can be purchased and downloaded from various sources. While the collection is extensive for a few artists that are unusual (such as Duke Ellington), it's actually not very extensive at all. Many jazz artists came up with no search results at all, and many pop artists I searched for I was able to find only more recent albums, and not a back catalog. Some popular bands, Radiohead in particular, are completely missing.
The most annoying thing, though, is that when you do find a record from an artists you'd like, some or all of the tracks may actually not be available for download! They appear, but say that they must be bought a-la-carte for 99 cents. What is the point of selling an all-you-can-download service when, in fact, many of the tracks have to be bought separately?
This service is basically shit. They have taken a name that used to signify an underground movement toward, depending how you see it, either free information or wanton theft, and produced from it a worthless tool for the technically unsavvy. Thanks, but I think I'll keep buying from the Russians---at least they don't dick me around.