Good and bad news.
First, the bad news...Napster has gone delete-happy and has removed most of the Word Studio Series tracks available on their site. Tracks from artists like Mark Schultz, Point Of Grace, etc. - gone. If you downloaded them as cripplewared WMAs, they will no longer work too (of course).
Christianbook.com has most of these tracks for purchase so I recommend purchasing them before they remove them, too.
I subscribe to Napster and purchase a lot of stuff there....but now I'm debating whether or not I will stay. This nonsense involving deletion of an entire series of tracks is crazy, but what do I know....
Now for good news...Praise Hymn has a site up and running that features nearly all of their past and present titles for purchase, as well as a large quantity of Mastertrax titles. This also includes most (but not all) of their Sound Performance tracks. The prices are 0.99 for Praise Hymn and Sound Performance stuff but 1.49 for the Mastertrax which is kinda high. Still, this is MUCH cheaper than paying $8 to $10 on average per song. If you're like me and are interested in singing multiple tracks by an artist, this is an inexpensive way to get them. The other downside is this does NOT include out of print Mastertrax and Benson Mastertrax, nor the Hi/Lo stuff (I point this out because Praise Hymn is now produced by Benson) and also doesn't include old single-key Praise Hymn tracks. BUT at least this is a step in the right direction.
This means that nearly every track manufacturer has their stuff available for digital purchase and download EXCEPT Christian World. They have "burn on demand" but you still have to pay full price. Also, Daywind has most of their tracks for digital purchase/download, but at $10.00 PER TRACK (except the demo) that is costly.
We've made significant progress with offering accompaniments for digital purchase and download, but there's still room for improvement. However I am satisfied with what I see. ;)
