Search Capabilities:  

Napster offers all the typical ways to search for music including by artist, title, album and genre. Simply use the search bar at the top of the screen. We liked that Napster was able to find an artist’s name even if we spelled it incorrectly. All searches are sorted into tabs entitled respectively: Artists, Albums and Tracks.

Feature Set:  

Perhaps Napster’s most impressive feature is its collection of DRM free music. All MP3 tracks are encoded a 256 bit rate and compatible with all MP3 players and portable music devices including iPod and Zune.

Napster has also introduced Napster Mobile. Napster Mobile is an application that gives you the ability to download songs directly to your phone without paying per track. All downloaded songs are charged directly to your bill. You pay for your music when you pay your regular phone bill. AT&T and CellularOne are the two biggest carriers supporting this feature.

Napster includes all the features you’d expect to find in a typical music download service, including a media player and streaming radio. However, we found you have to import your existing music files manually.

Our favorite feature in the media is automix. Essentially, automix is just a streaming radio station, but the station is tailored to your tastes based on the artists and songs already in your library. Napster also gives you a list of other stations to listen to included with your subscription.

A unique feature we found with Napster is the Military discount. Napster has worked a deal with AAFES (Army Air Force Exchange Service) in which soldiers receive a 10 percent discount on track and album sales and a 30 percent discount on subscription services.

In the future, we’d like to see Napster spread its wings a bit and offer other digital media like audiobooks, podcasts, movies and television programs.