Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Radiohead Albums Available on Napster and iTunes

After years of chomping at the bit searching on the new Napster subscription service waiting for them to add one of my favorite bands, Radiohead, the wait is finally over. This week, Radiohead not only released all of their old EMI albums onto the more popular and promoted service, iTunes, but they also released them onto the originator of all digital music downloads, Napster. It seems they planned these digital releases around their new hits album, "The Best Of", which was released yesterday. Not bad idea guys.

I am currently listening to the "Kid A" album which is fully available to download on as a member and listen as much as you want online.

Other Radiohead albums available on Napster are:

In Rainbows - 30 second previews for each song. Hopefully that changes!
The Bends - All songs are available for members.
Amnesiac - All songs are available for members.
Pablo Honey - All songs are available for members.
I Might Be Wrong - All songs are available for members.
Knives Out (Domestic Only) - All songs are available for members.
Hail To The Thief - All songs are available for members.
OK Computer - All songs are available for members.
Best Of - All songs available for members.

I know that you can access Napster.com and listen to some songs directly without even having an account, but I think most are 30 second previews unless the artist specifically requests. There is also a 7-day trial available which is how I originally tried it out after they went legit.

Yeah, Napster had a bad rap for a while, but they cleaned up their act and pay the royalties just like anyone else now. Most of the albums are available to download if you are a subscriber and some you can listen to even if you are just checking out Napster.com. I have been a member of the new Napster service for a few years now and it works pretty darn good and has a huge library of music and also some videos now. They are always expanding the titles as I have just mentioned, but they also add a ton of new features for the software itself every update.

The latest feature to the Napster service itself actually allows it to be used with an iPod or iPhone now. This was not possible a few months back which should really start expand the user base of the Napster Music service as it can handle all mp3 players now. I have the Napster-To-Go package which actually allows you to download as much music as you want to your media player of choice all month for only like $14.95. It is a great deal if you really like to listen to music. There is one drawback where you have to reconnect and basically sync with the software to keep the DRM up to date on the files on the player.

Once they can get the content DRM-free like iTunes, Napster will once again be the choice for online music that it once was, but by playing by the rules this time. Not too bad for some 16 year old kid if you ask me. Watch out Apple, Napster is on the comeback!