ITunes, Napster & others

A Quick Cost Comparison

Published on January 30, 2004 By Zamise In Music

I was unable to find this comparison anywhere without having to go to each site and look the info up. I thought it would be convienent to see side by side, so I had reasearched it myself and made a quick comparison for part of a class paper on mp3s. *Info was accurate as of 1/28/04.

Downloading mp3s from the Internet can be a frivolous past time. There are hundreds of sites and applications that are dedicated to getting legal and or illegal mp3s. To make it easier, the following lists some URLs where mp3 can be found for downloading and the costs associated with using them.

Napster (http://www.napster.com/) is currently $9.95 per month for the service then an additional $.99 per song or $9.95 an album. It claims over 500,000 tracks for its users.

Itunes (http://www.apple.com/itunes/) currently lists at $.99 per song. It claims over 500,000 tracks as well for its users.

Kazaa (http://www.kazaa.com/) is free, and boasts over 1,000,000,000 shared files and countless mp3s. However, the down side is that it is adware, and it has spyware bundled into the installation of the software that can not be easily removed. For $29.95 Kazaa can be purchased with no adware, yet it still contains spyware. There is also a hard to find version called Kazaa lite that has these features removed.

MP3.com (http://www.mp3.com/) currently appears to be dead or undergoing major changes.

Zeropaid (http://www.zeropaid.com/) is a "file sharing portal" with the latest information on Peer to Peer file sharing programs.

Comments

Larry Kuperman

on Jan 31, 2004

An important note. Kazaa is one of the major paths used to distribute and proliferate internet viruses. A recent article at Wired News (http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,61852,00.html?tw=wn_story_top5) stated that "Forty-five percent of the executable files downloaded through Kazaa, the most popular file-sharing program, contain malicious code like viruses and Trojan horses, according to a new study."

While music files downloaded from Kazaa are not likely to be infected (not executables after all) unsophisticated users can be tricked into downloading a malicious file "by giving the file name a double extension such as .wav.exe (for music) or .jpg.exe (for images)." The user downloads the file and clicks on it and the virus is launched.

Zamise

on Feb 01, 2004

No doubt viruses are a big problem... Playing devils advocate here, but Kazaa does come with built in antivirus software. It is important to scan all files no mater where they come from, untrusted sources like Kazaa do make them easier to spread, but even trusted sources can have them. Therefore there is no definative way to be safe from them, except to keep your computer locked in a room and never turn it on. Also to note, is that Kazaa is itself considered to be in the "malicious code" or malware catagory. You will likely have trouble if you run independent utilities that deal with security issues along side of kazaa. As its popularity shows, it does mean it is a testiment to consumers wants that they will still risk such problems as so they do not have to pay the high prices.

Also, what I find interesting is that newer techknowlogies that supposed to help protect the illigal distribution of software seems to be failing. Some of them from what I've heard, like mp4s are self executing which might lend itself to these viruses and malicious code more readily than mp3s. Just something to look out for as well in the future.

Tech Cat

on Feb 01, 2004

I find it funny that Kazaa has a shareware version of their software which is designed to help people steal copyrighted works. I would find it funny if illegal copies of the shareware version of Kazaa was being traded over Kazaa and other peer to peer networks and Kazaa was to get upset about this happening. I would never use Kazaa even for "legitimate purposes". Sharing my Word files or whatever can be done over FTP.

Zamise

on Jun 03, 2004

Late response here, but I wouln't be surprised either if kazaa lite is being shared through its own shareware version. In my research for kazaa lite, I could not find a copy of it on the internet, but a lot of refrencess to it sort of like it was there at one time and somebody, not saying who for sure (Sharmin Networks Ltd?) has made it hard for others to distribute it. Kind of a tid bit hypocrical I think.

Oh well, I mostly like to buy my music from these things called music stores. I prefere media play and a local shop that carries a lot of rare stuff I like. CDnow.com use to be cool, but you know what? I don't mind my extra few dollars going to a store that maintains stock of items I like or even stuff I didn't even know I liked until I seen it at the store. I've reverted I guess you could say, the local store I go to does not even have a computer database for me to search. And sadist of all, I listen to radio more than I use to now.

voodoostation

on Jun 03, 2004

Kazaa lite has been removed from search engines. There is another version, called Kazaa gold, or something similar. Hated Kazaa, loved WinMX, after Napster, of course.

Dusk411

on Jun 03, 2004

WinMX is great. Although my favorite P2P was Audiogalaxy. You could put the files in a queue. They were able to finish quickly and didn't use much bandwith. I miss Audiogalaxy. They had snarky music articles there, too.

Zamise

on Jun 04, 2004

Affirmative, I had a lot of fun on Audio Galaxy, friends and groups of friends use to send me songs all the time on that, songs I liked. I would not say that I purchased all the songs I had received, but I definatly spent more money on legal music during that time AG was up. That was a major blow when they had to switch to a pay scheme for copyrighted songs. I think AG is still up, if it is I doubt that it is the same, only because you cant send any song you wish to your friends.

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