How (If I can) get the new (pay) napster songs to play in linux?
 

Here's my problem: Napster sucks. But that's OK.

What I want to do is to play the DRM-protected WMA songs under linux. I know that I can burn & re-rip, but that kills audio quality. I have the license, and I have the actual song. I should be able to play the song, right?

Hmmm, I'm afraid not. I used to work for a DRM company that dealt extensively with encrypted WMA's. The DRM technology from Microsoft is highly tied in with Windows and stores its key files in locations related to the Windows Media Player and the Windows System folder. AFAIK nobody has managed to get this working on Linux and I'm sure this suits Microsoft just fine.

My advice would be to boycott music services which provide DRM'd files and instead use services which allow you to purchase songs in DRM-free formats like MP3. Sites like bleep.com, wippit.com and emusic.com come to mind but there are others.

check out allofmp3.com. Still the best and the most fair IMHO.

Heh, I'm not so sure about those allofmp3 people, methinks their legal status is very dodgy. They claim to pay a Russian royalty body but it's alleged that this is just a front for legality as that body doesn't in turn forward the funds on to the artists/record companies in other countries. They're being taken to court by various international royalty bodys at the moment...

In that case get them while you can! :)

I have never used this method my self but in theory it should work. You could use JACK http://jackaudio.org/ and as I understand it re-route the sound back to a recourding program with in linux. This sould minimise any sound quality loss. People are using this to set up there recourding studio so it must be good.