Other sites can't touch Napster for online music

By Burt Lum

While everyone is downloading the last songs from Napster, I asked myself what life will be like without the popular music-swapping program? But the times they are a-changin'. With the record industry putting the clamps on Napster, what's a good cyber-citizen to do?

As it turns out, there are many Napster wannabes, but very few of them live up to the ease of use and quick response of Napster. Nevertheless, I feel it is my duty to report my findings.

A friend of mine who was a big-time Napster junkie until he got banned from the service told me about Audio Gnome (www.audiognome.com). After checking out the site a few times, when I went back to dig a bit deeper, Audio Gnome was off-line. I wouldn't normally report on a site that is offline but given the current state of P2P (peer to peer) and music swapping, I chalked it up to life on the bleeding edge. I'll check back later.

So with one dead end encountered, I was off on the trail of Gigabeat (www.gigabeat.com), another alleged P2P application.

On the surface, Gigabeat looked like it had some promise. Once you find an artist, the program would then return song selections from that artist and others in the same genre. Gigabeat would then find the song and point you to a choice of Internet radio stations where you might hear it. Here's where it gets weird. These radio stations only have a probability of playing your song selection. Sorry, I fail to see the killer app in that.

The last site I checked out on this pass was www.listen.com. It helps ferret out your favorite artists but is very limited when it comes to selections.

My recommendation: Napster is/was still the best. If I find a decent replacement, you will be the first to know. ;-)

Burt Lum, cyber-citizen and self-anointed tour guide to the Internet frontier, is one click away at burt@brouhaha.net.