Napster unfriendly to classical music

One of the most common ways to buy music at Napster is through a prepaid card, one that allows a customer to buy 15 songs for a card which costs about $15 at electronics stores. The card allows the holder to buy individual tracks, but not an entire album.

This poses a problem for classical music fans, because Napster bans purchases of individual tracks longer than 10 minutes or so -- such tracks can only be purchased as part of an entire album, which can be bought with a credit card but not a Napster card. That means a Napster prepaid download card can rarely be used to download a classical music album track by track, because invariably there's a track or two from a symphony or a suite which lasts longer than 10 minutes. (Pop music songs, of course, usually last only about five minutes or so.) I searched and searched for a classical album I could use my 15-song card to download, and finally found "Michael Torke: 3." I downloaded it, burned it to make a CD, and then discovered one of the tracks was messed up and had about 30 seconds of silence.

I don't think I'll be using Napster to buy classical music. My experience reinforces my opinion that Emusic is the best online service for building up a music collection.