Gadget: Napster Unlimited

If you're still buying your music on compact discs, the internet is here to offer a rather tempting solution. Buying music online is nothing new – iTunes, Amazon and even Tesco have their own music download stores. The problem is the music isn't much cheaper than buying a normal CD. Napster has a different proposition – for 5 a month, you can access ten million music tracks and choose five MP3 files a month to keep forever.

I didn't need to download any software and once I had my user ID and password I could access Napster's archive. Every track I wanted, from the Proclaimers to Prodigy, was all there.

Impressive, but the music streaming service Spotify can do this too – and for free. Where Napster shows its music muscle is with features such as interactive radio stations, MoodManager and dynamic playlists. With over 40 playlist categories including everything from "Air Guitar" to "Sunny Day" – it takes the hassle out of music hunting. If you're even more indecisive, use the MoodManager. I picked a shade of bright pink and was rewarded with a selection of "warm fuzzy feeling" tracks featuring Katie Melua, Jack Johnson and Newton Faulkner.

The only catch is that the ten million tracks at your beck and call are pretty much confined to the four walls of your house.

If you want to plop them on your MP3 player or iPod, it's a case of paying more cash on a per-song basis, just like iTunes. This detail aside, Napster is the ultimate music solution – it's like having the biggest jukebox in the world in your living room for a fiver a month.

This article was first published in The Scotsman, Saturday June 5, 2010