Upgrading to a Zen Micro / Napster To Go

I have been thinking of upgrading my old and trustworthy Creative Nomad Zen 20GB for quite a while now. It's battery has seen better days, it is no longer very beautiful (compared to e.g. the iPod mini), and even more, since I started using Napster I kind of stopped buying music, and hence I grew tired of the contents of the thing.

I have been looking at the iPod family for a while, and well, have been quite tempted by the iPod mini, but then again, it's menu structure is directly horrible to work with, the battery life-time is poor even out of the box, and it only supports DRM'ed music via the proprietary AAC format. :( Not being totally happy about what was on the market I kind of chose not to buy anything...

... until today. On Thursday Napster launched it's Napster To Go product. I suddenly got all excited. For an additional five pounds I could download all the music I would like to, and even transfer it to a compatible device. In my world this is a dream scenario. Pay a fixed fee, listen to (almost) all the music you want. The price; less than one CD pr. month.

The Register had a rather nasty piece on Napster To Go yesterday. Largely the complaint is that you don't own the music, if you stop paying then away goes your service.

Well, ok, you don't really own the music on your CD today either - you own a life-time right to play the music on it. So it is a tradeoff, all the CDs in the catalog for 15GBP (or 15USD in the US) pr. month or 15GBP per CD for a lifetime. At the end of the day it is about preference, and also about how one listens to music. I often listen to a CD heavily for a few weeks and then "forget" about it. I don't really need to own it. Hence for me the benefit of having "full access" exceeds the loss of not having a CD in my shelf. Maybe not an investment of a lifetime, but hey, I don't think CDs qualify as investment either.

Today I ordered my Napster To Go compatible device, the Creative Zen Micro, on Amazon.co.uk. Hopefully I'll be able to fill it up with legally rented music for a long time to come! I am for sure hearing forward to it!