KaZaA is back... but only in name. The former illegal music P2P paradise has relaunched as a legit subscription music service that offers unlimited streams and downloads for a flat monthly fee. For $19.98 per month, music listeners in the US can grab as many tracks as they want from major and independent artists. But as usual, the new KaZaA offers nothing unique over the plethora of other music services online, and its limitations will keep it from ever becoming popular.

KaZaA as a P2P service has been dead for a number of years now after the music and movie industries tried to sue KaZaA's parent company into oblivion. Sharman Networks ended up settling the lawsuits with a number of music publishers, MPAA, RIAA, and IFPI, but not before shelling out something in the neighborhood of $150 million and closing operations.

Now, KaZaA is back as a monthly subscription service. It only functions in the US for the time being and only works under Windows, as the files are Windows Media DRMed. The music is playable on up to three authorized PCs and apparently zero portable music players (according to the site's new About page), though you can download an unlimited number of ringtones to a single cell phone of your choosing. Like most subscription services, all music downloaded from KaZaA becomes inaccessible once you cancel your subscription.

With all those unique and attractive features, it's hard to believe users aren't banging down the servers over at KaZaA trying to get a piece of the action. Indeed, playing around on the site (which requires a credit card so the company can charge you after your seven-day free trial) shows that it works exactly like every other music site out there—we were able to find selections from popular and even some independent artists, but if indie is your thing, you're much better off heading to Amie Street, eMusic, or even iTunes and Amazon. Or, if you are totally anti-download, Napster even offers a better selection of indie artists, based on our handful of searches.

With KaZaA, you can either choose to play the music you've found right away or download the files to your computer. If you choose to play them, they will authenticate through Windows Media Player and begin streaming directly from the service—we found this to be the easiest way to listen. You can also download individual tracks or full albums, which will also be sent to Windows Media Player after you choose where to save the files.

We didn't run into any problems while testing the service aside from a little trouble finding some of the more obscure artists, but there also wasn't anything that stood out to us about this new and improved version of KaZaA. The service tries to differentiate itself by allowing users to pay for the subscription either with a credit card or attached to their monthly cell phone bills, but this level of choice is comparable to being able to use either cash or credit card at the gas pump in terms of excitement.

Otherwise, KaZaA is a very vanilla service with vanilla offerings, and, in this overcrowded market, vanilla doesn't make the big bucks. It's clear that KaZaA is hoping that its once-dedicated followers will come back as legit customers, but it's so late to the online music game that such a dream is unlikely to come true—those users are either still pirating music through other means or already customers of some other music store, or both. But if you're in the mood to give the service a spin, don't let us stop you; the one virtue of KaZaA is that it's easy to cancel online when you're done with the free trial.