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.  Yet, most new cell phones can do just that, especially the mobile phones carried by younger people.

Imagine trying to explain the Internet to someone as recently as the 1970's.  I tried…unsuccessfully.  Furthermore, as late as the early part of the last decade of the twentieth century, our current Internet speed would have seemed more of a distant hope than a short term reality.  Yet, today, most of us connect using 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 something of a rocky start as a place where music lovers could find each other and, using the Napster software, exchange their music files over the Internet, even before the world wide web had come along.  No money ever changed hands.  In a way, it was just like selling bootleg CDs except that nobody made any income from it.  In fact it was the free part of the model that angered the recording artists and record labels.  Eventually Napster settled with the recording industry, with a huge financial settlement.  They learned their lesson well enough to completely change their business model.

Napster.com, the same company that started as just a vehicle for peer-to-peer music exchanges, 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.  They offer various plans, but the best all around deal is a three month membership, which can be renewed if you still haven't satisfied your music thirst.  I suspect you'll renew, but the three months will give you a good taste of the service.

For the widely recommended three month plan you get five download credits per month plus bonus credits.  You also get unlimited streaming audio, which, believe me is great!  You can listen to the entire catalogs of your favorite artists or, if you prefer, entire albums of a variety of artists.  There are also over a thousand interactive, genre playlists.  They even have a streaming radio station.

The downloads you choose can be played on any MP3 compatible device, including Ipod, Zune and many others.  In fact, if you cell phone has this option, you can even carry the music you've downloaded from Napster on that, 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 burn a CD for yourself.

There is a huge list of musical genres.  If you are similar to me, you choose from a lot of different genres, but if your tastes are more specific, you will certainly find your favorite genre.  Among those genres are rock, pop, classical, R&B, musical soundtracks, Christian, jazz, comedy, and the list goes on.

You can surround yourself with your own selected music and never repeat a song for three months for only fifteen dollars at Napster.com.  Where can you find that much pleasure at that price?