The Napster Blog

Napster Beta - Player and Navigation Enhancements

We wanted to give you a heads-up on some recently released changes to the Napster Beta. Many of you told us that you want the ability to add all the songs in your queue to a playlist—we listened and now have that functionality available! Also, we've added player status notifications when adding albums and songs to your queue and when deleting songs from a playlist. We've also tweaked some navigational elements in the header at the top of the page to make it easier for you to get around the site. These changes include menu drop-downs on hover-over with your mouse and clearer links to learn more about the Beta.

We are excited to have the Napster Blog integrated into the Beta. The Napster Blog has a ton of rich content about new releases, album reviews and other events in the world of music. Each piece is delivered by our staff of professional writers daily. Today, you can read about Michael Jackson, Taylor Swift and the American Music Awards or learn about music inspired by the Berlin Wall on the 20th anniversary of its fall.

That's it for now! More news on the new Napster Beta will be out soon...

-Bill Coats

Sr. Product Manager

New Version of Napster Beta Released

The Napster Team sends a shout-out to the thousands of Napster members and visitors who have taken a look at the new Napster beta and provided feedback! We hope you are enjoying browsing around and using some of the new features, like our embedded player and auto-complete search. We're actively reading through your comments and will do our best to prioritize and take action on this valuable feedback.

I wanted to also let our users know we released the latest version of the new Napster beta today. A lot of the work we’ve done has been focused on building out the core functionality of the site. While many of these improvements are not visually noticeable because they are "behind the scenes," they will improve the overall experience. Among the improvements:

• Improved presentation of our embedded player and queue display
• Enhanced site performance by optimizing page and content load times
• Many minor bug fixes

By the way, if you haven’t already tried our new full-screen album browser—you should! To see it for yourself, just visit any artist page, browse to the albums tab and click on the button with the four arrows on the right side of the Napster window. It looks like this:

Follow this link to Michael Jackson’s album page and click the full-screen button if you’d like to try it out now.

We're planning more releases in the near future, and our team will be sure to let you know immediately each time we make them available. In the meantime, I encourage all of our beta visitors to take our full survey, which will help the team learn more about your preferences and make the new Napster experience even better.

—Bill Coats, Sr. Product Manager

Introducing the New Napster—Now Open for Beta Testing!

We're very happy to be able to share an exciting new development with you: For some time now, we've been working on a whole new design for Napster based on suggestions from our members. The goal is to make finding, playing, and buying music easier and more fun. We like it a lot and hope you'll agree.

We're still testing and tweaking at this point, but we've opened up the beta version now in order to get as much additional feedback as possible. Your comments will help us make the new design even better, so if you're curious, please give the new Napster beta a try and send us your thoughts. If you're a Napster member, you can sign in with your existing member name and password.

Here are a couple of major areas we've been working on:

Search
We've heard that you want to find artists, albums, and songs as fast as possible. Napster’s improved search now includes auto-suggest results that appear as you type. When you see what you're looking for, one click takes you there. You can even play an Automix directly from the results.

Player
The new Napster has an embedded player that stays front-and-center no matter where you click on the site. When you add music to the player, the new pop-up player queue makes it all easier to see and manage. Drag and drop songs, make playlists,and even buy music right from the queue.

Again, once you've taken the new Napster beta for a spin, please send us feedback. Let us know what you think so we can make Napster the best it can be.

We'll be posting more about the new Napster beta in this space as we work to make improvements, so check back often. And we're looking forward to hearing from you, too. Thanks in advance for helping us build the best music experience online.

Video: Playlists

Do you know how to find and enjoy Napster's professionally programmed playlists, and build your own? Learn more about the more than 1,000 Napster playlists, and learn how to create your own by clicking the link below to play the video.

Napster Playlists

Video: Automix

Have you ever seen the "automix" button while listening or building playlists? Click the automix button while playing any track to get an instant playlist filled with similar songs you might enjoy.

To learn more about automix, launch today's video (4 of 6):

Napster automix Video

Video: Billboard Charts

In today's video (3 of 6), we show you how you can search and play hits from various Billboard charts going back to 1955, and top albums dating back to 1969.

Want to hear what was popular when you were born? How about during your prom or wedding? Napster's exclusive Billboard charts feature creates an instant decade-based playlist that's perfect for an event—or just some personal nostalgia.

Double-click below to watch the video and learn more!

Video: New Music

Today's video (2 of 6) shares all the great ways you can discover new music in Napster. Did you know that new music is added to Napster each day, and we'll highlight what's new every Tuesday?

Find out how to find new music on Napster via Featured New Releases, New Arrivals and Personalized New Arrivals pages.

To learn more, double-click below to watch the video!

Video: Napster Search

Today we're posting the first of six daily videos created specifically to help you discover and enjoy the best features in Napster.

With Napster's search feature, you can easily find bios, background information, songs and albums from specific artists you are looking for. Plus you can discover even more, including artist remixes, featured appearances and even covers of that artist's work by other artists.

Double-click below to play the video and learn more!

Get the Most out of Napster: Napster Download Manager

Have you tried the new Napster Download Manager? Available now for the Web version of Napster, it's a way to automatically save your MP3 downloads for use with another music program, such as iTunes or Windows Media Player.

You can install the Napster download manager here (remember to restart your browser after installing), or you can get the download manager the next time you make an MP3 purchase. Simply choose the download manager option in the purchase confirmation dialog box, then select your default music or program when prompted. All future MP3 purchases will flow automatically to the destination you select. You can change your settings at any time.

It's never been easier to find, buy, and save music you love with Napster. Try the download manager today and let us know what you think.

Get the Most out of Napster: Cue it Up!

A cool little trick you can try when using Napster on the Web is to drag and drop your favorite tracks, albums, or playlists onto the Napster kitty logo on the left side of the window header. Doing this adds them to the Now Playing list in your pop-up Web player without interrupting whatever you're currently listening to. Whatever you add to the player in this way will be "cued up" to play after whatever is already in line to play. If you're using the Napster client software, you can simply drag and drop tracks, albums, or playlists into the persistent player.

When you drag and drop music onto the upper-left Napster logo, you'll notice the logo flicker a bit, which means your music hit its target. A green confirmation bubble will then appear briefly to let you know your music's been added to the Now Playing list in the player. One thing to keep in mind: This trick will work for any track, album, or playlist, anywhere they appear, except for artist and home page Top 10 charts.

And remember, as soon as you've cued up music in your pop-up player (or the persistent player if you're using the client software), you can easily change the playback order by dragging and dropping tracks in the Now Playing list.

This week, I'm listening to Block Party's Intimacy album. Drop it on the kitty head logo today and cue it up!

Enjoy,

-Chris S.