Ever since the real Napster died a few years ago, I’ve really been turned off on music. The original Napster opened up a whole new way of experiencing music. That is, you could share and listen to lots of music. Of course, the free part didn’t hurt either, but this was really secondary to the diversity of the music offered. After Napster died, the thought of purchasing a CD or even an iTunes song was really unappealing. Most of the fun in music, at me at least, was in the discovering of new music.
Napster’s sharing feature was really pretty primitive, but it was effective. I remember that you could click on any Napster user’s name to view a compete list of their catalog of music — at least the list of music that they had in a “share-able” folder. Not everyone shared, but a lot did. I discovered some great, eclectic music this way. In fact, this eclectic mix of music became the only music I listened to.
This is why I am sooo stoked about subscription music services and especially Yahoo! Unlimited (yeah, there are other subscription services, but are they going to be around in five or 10 years?). Subscription services offer the potential for sharing and discovering music — much like the old Napster. Of course, all of these services need to work on expanding their catalogs, offer better ways to share music and support standards (like Yahoo!’s support of the XSPF XML playlist open standard).
So, to offer a little sharing to digital music universe, here’s a new album that I’m kind of liking. It’s a bit sappy and poppy, but good background music. I saw Ben Lee several years ago, and can say that he’s got a lot of talent.

BTW, I hate the fact that you can’t just copy a URL from the Yahoo! Music client. It’s a client that sort of looks and works like a browser, but really isn’t. Kind of feels like it was designed by a committee. Therefore, the album art above is linked to Amazon’s site.
Like I said, these subscription services need some work.