Portable CD MP3 Player

MusicGremlin (MP3 player/digital music service) Preview

Recently CNET has published a preview for MusicGremlin (MP3 player/digital music service) on their site. They write

Upside: The MusicGremlin will let you purchase music à la carte from its MusicGremlin Direct online store for 99 cents per track or buy a $15-per-month all-you-can-download subscription. The store should have more than 2 million tracks at launch, so it’ll be competitive with the iTunes Music Store and Virgin Digital. Subscribers can grab new songs anytime they like (as long as they have a wireless connection) or subscribe to Gremlist, which are hand-programmed playlists that are updated weekly and automatically download new music to the player.

Downside: The MusicGremlin will debut in an 8GB model (and possibly a 4GB), which isn’t much storage, although the player itself is still as large as the first-generation iPod. This is no diminutive flash player. It needs a larger battery for Wi-Fi, which is why the unit ends up on the bigger side. Getting the most out of it requires not only the initial purchase but also a monthly subscription, since you can’t subscribe to Gremlist without one. The player works with Windows PCs but not Macs, and we’re a bit disappointed that it doesn’t display pictures or videos, since it’s so cutting edge in other ways.