Napster nails DRM with largest MP3 catalogue

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 21 May 2008 04:20

Business IT - Technology

Apple originally charged a premium for unprotected tracks, which also provided higher audio quality. It subsequently reduced the price of "iTunes Plus" tracks to the store's normal rate.

The advantage of MP3 tracks is that they will work on just about any recent computer or device capable of playing audio files. The downside is that more modern codecs such as AAC deliver better sound quality for a given file size.

Napster's MP3 store appears to be open only to US customers, with visitors from other countries being redirected to free.napster.com.

And even though the company is presumably looking to tempt customers from the market-leading iTunes Store as it is headlining iPod and iPhone compatibility, Safari users are locked out of the store and advised to use Firefox instead.