Through most of the last century can you imagine what would have happened to some poor guy who speculated that someday we would use the same instrument to call our business colleagues and play our favorite music.  Of course, almost all new mobile phones can do that and much more.

Imagine trying to explain the Internet to someone as recently as the 1970’s.  I tried…unsuccessfully.  Even into the 1990s, our current Internet speeds with broadband connections would have seemed like a distant dream.  Wrong!  Ten years later the majority of us are connect to broadband services.  Streaming music to our desktops is no longer interrupted by frequent pauses to resupply the buffer of our memory.

The Napster people had quite a rocky start as a place where music lovers could find each other and, using Napster’s amazing technology, exchange their music over the Internet, even before the world wide web had come along.  No money was ever exchanged.  It was a bit like selling illegal bootleg CDs except that nobody made any income from it.  In fact it was the free part of the model that perturbed the recording artists and record labels.  Eventually Napster settled with the recording industry, with a huge financial settlement at Napster’s expense.  They learned their lesson well enough to completely change their business model.

Napster, started as a free trading music set, but it has now become the owner of the largest music catalog on the Internet, with over seven million titles.  While it is not free, as it was in the wild days of the early Internet, it is still an amazing bargain.  The site provides what is widely regarded as the greatest bargain for music fans with a three month introductory subscription, with renewals at the same low rates.  Three months will give you a good sense of what the service has to offer, and I strongly suspect that you’ll decide to renew.  A lot of people have maintained a membership for years.

For the widely recommended three month plan you get five download credits per month plus bonus credits.  Included in the plan is the reason that most people subscribe in the first place–unlimited (!) streaming music.  You can listen to entire albums or even the entire catalog of their various artists of your favorites.  There are also over a thousand interactive, genre playlists.  There are streaming radio stations, too.

The downloads you choose can be played on any MP3 compatible device, including a number of lesser know brands plus the extremely popular Ipod and Zune players.  A lot of newer cell phones have built in MP3 players and sufficient memory to hold a number of your favorite selections, as well.

With your three month membership downloads, you receive unrestricted rights, so you can put your music onto various of your players.  You can even use your software to create your own CD.

There is a huge list of musical genres.  I’m sure you’ll find your favorite on the list, unless you are like me and listen to music from a wide variety of genres.  The list is huge, but a few of the genres are jazz, pop, rock, Christian, children, comedy, country and the list goes on….

All of this is just $15 for the three months of delightful musical saturation at Napster.com.  Face it, that’s cheaper than a fast food lunch for three.