I tried Napster yesterday for the first time in years. Napster was a great program I used a good few years ago to download MP3s. Napster soon became world famous and was then shut down due to the fact it was illegal to download copyrighted material.

As we all know there are now hundreds, if not thousands of ways of downloading music illegally should you wish to. I have chosen personally to now avoid such means. Maybe I have become a little paranoid from reading horror stories about “everyday” people like you or I getting £5,000 fines or worse for downloading the latest Robbie Williams single, but I feel with so many music law enforcement agencies out there to get you it’s best to move on to something safer. This is when I returned to Napster…

Napster is back (has been for 2 years or so) and is 100% legal. You now have to pay for your music. Not a problem, I have a generous collection of legal CDs and DVDs and do not object to paying for material. I pay £9.99 a month for which I have access to millions of music files and can download an unlimited amount.

The music files you downloaded are protected using DRM (Digital Rights Management) and can only be played back on your registered PC or two other nominated machines. If you chose to end your subscription all your previously downloaded media files will become unavailable. Bit of a problem but that’s the way it is (although if you look around there are ways of converting your protected music to standard WAV and MP3 files, you’ll need to search Google on that though, it is also illegal).

I think the £9.99 monthly fee is more than fair. Look at it like this, £9.99 a month is less than £2.50 a week – a price of a pint for unlimited music. Not bad huh?

They run a free 7 day trial, try it out, if you chose to cancel you simply call up ( UK number) and get to speak to a friendly American who will cancel your account and tell you to “Have a nice day”.