Page 1 of Download Unlimited tracks from NAPSTER For £10 a month!!

Looking around for MP3 track deals. It seems the best I`ve found so far is to download an umlimited number of tracks in one month through NAPSTER legally for one month and then cancel the membership ... all for just under £10.

Seems too good to be true ... have I missed something?

Apart from the illegal free download sites, does anyone know if you can get a better deal from anyone else?

Thanks!! :/

Sadly, it`s not quite as good as that.You can download as much as you want, agreed; but the protection on the music you download means that you can only play it back if you are still a Napster subscriber. As soon as you cancel, you lose the ability to play the music you`ve downloaded. Also, you can only copy the music to certain MP3 players, and presumably they can enforce the same protection - plus, this subscription costs £14.99 a month. So yes, you get unlimted music for a tenner / fifteen a month, but you have to keep paying to use it. If you typically spend at least this much on buying music, then it`s still a good deal, and you can try stuff you wouldn`t necessarily have spent money on, so you can improve the quality of music you buy.

Sandy

Is there no way of copying them on to a CD (which is legal) then converting to MP3 back to the hard drive taking away the NAPSTER protection. Surely once its on the MP3 PLAYER they should still play and not be hindered by no longer being a subscriber.

I don`t believe so, but it might be worth speculating a tenner to try it out. Napster run a separate service, Napster Lite, which is a traditional model (i.e. you pay per track) and this does let you burn to a CD, so presumably they have different levels of Digital Rights Management (DRM) on the tracks depending on how you purchase them.

If you do give it a shot, be sure and let us all know how successful or otherwise it is!

Sandy

Quote:
Is there no way of copying them on to a CD (which is legal) then converting to MP3 back to the hard drive taking away the NAPSTER protection. Surely once its on the MP3 PLAYER they should still play and not be hindered by no longer being a subscriber.

This certainly works for other protected downloaded music which I have got from Tescos , Woolworths and MSN Music (to name but 3 :) ). I had to do this to allow me to play the tracks on a bog-standard MP3 player which although it plays WMA , it doesn`t support Digital Rights Management. Can`t see why it would be any different for Napster music.

Thanks!!

GMAN what process/software would I need to get rid of Digital Rights Management, copy them on to a CD then back on to PC as MP3/WMA, preferably freeware than shareware!!

Cheers for your help!! Will let you all know whether it works when I do give it a go!! £10 small sacrifice to pay!!

Sorry to be the one who seems to be pi%%ing on the picnic here, but normal downloaded tracks from Tescos etc. do allow you to burn to a CD, as part of the rights imposed by the DRM software. The same goes for Napster Lite, where you pay the 79p or so per track - you can burn them to your heart`s content. But this doesn`t apply to the Napster subscription packages, where the DRM solely allows playback, not burning. From the Napster FAQ :-

Quote:
8. What if I just want to buy songs or albums to burn to CD or transfer to a compatible MP3 player?
You can always use Napster Light, Napster`s 79p music store, to purchase tracks for 79p and albums from £7.95. Once purchased, you can keep this music on your PC forever, burn it to CD or transfer to a compatible MP3 player. You can get Napster Light when you download and register for Napster. Napster and Napster To Go members can also purchase songs for as low as 68p each with Napster Track Packs. Click here to see why we think a Membership is such a good deal.

The only option I can see is to use a package which records the output of your soundcard, such as Virtuoso? This will take the output stream and re-encode it as an MP3 or WAV file. Downsides to this are
[list] [*] It will take 4 minutes to re-code a 4 minute song
[*] By re-encoding, you`ve created a 2nd generation copy which will be of lower quality (although it may not be noticable, to be honest)
[*] There`s a constant battle between DRM and utility vendors to close such loopholes - it may be that even this isn`t feasible any more [/list]

Standard disclaimer - this is all based on what I`ve read, and not on practical experience, so by all means prove me wrong! I bought my first ever online album this week from iTunes, and immediately burned-and-ripped to create non-DRM MP3s, and it was remarkably easy

Sandy

There are several ways to remove the DRM (including copying to cds and back)... but most involve re-encoding the tracks... which will reduce the quality of the music each time.

And its against terms and conditions, and therefore i guess illegal... so it kind of defeats the object of paying for the music doesn`t it?

I`d recommend a certain russian site that begins will "all" and ends with "mp3", but i dunno what the mods would make of it, though as far as i know it isn`t strictly illegal.

There`s some info regarding the MP3 site mentioned. There are current ongoing legal battles with the firms that provide this music cheaply. Suppose they would need to take brunt first as informing users it is legal!!

See the below link from the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0%2C3605%2C1171203%2C00.html?80%3A+Online

For the lazy among us here