Online Music Stores Compared 594
prostoalex writes "DesignTechnica has a comparison of the leading online music stores. With the variety of services available they only concentrated on several top ones. Conclusion? 'If you simply want to download music from the charts, then Yahoo and Wal-Mart are your cheapest options. For your MP3 player, there are several options, with Yahoo the best of all. If you're an iPod owner... then you're stuck with iTunes.'"
Music Services (Score:5, Interesting)
Musicmatch is owned by Yahoo - why is it different? (Yahoo Music engine is a 3 meg download for Windows - a tiny player with pretty good functionality, especially compared to Napsters memory hogging skinned Windows Media Player).
With the Windows Plays for Sure stuff (Yahoo, Napster to Go) it only transfers to a Plays for Sure portable. While the article briefly touches that mentioning it's only a handful of players now, they should have specifically called "Doesn't work with iPods!" As someone already noted in the comments, iPod has 80-90% share of the portable MP3 market.
And last but not least, licenses. With the exception of Yahoo (I believe), if your hard drive crashes you lose your license for tracks you've purchased for 99 cents each. Gone, poof. Like losing a CD. You'd think that buying a song online, they'd have a record of your purchase and let you re-download, but no.
I've used most of the services, except iTunes on a Mac, and if Yahoo puts some marketing muscle behind YME they have a shot at 2nd place and displacing Napster. They offer the same functionality for less than half what Napster and Rhapsody try.
As a Linux only user, I'm contiually frustrated by my lack of music buying options online. I suppose I should try out SharpMusique as an iTunes interface one of these days.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually legal?, Where?. IIRC where [I suppose] you live it is legal to DOWNLOAD music, although it is illegal to SHARE [upload] it.
Now, IIRC again, in Russia [where this service is given] it is legal [maybe it is not fair but it is still legal and, you know some laws/practices in the US that are not fair but again, they are LAW].
So, when someone is downloading a bought music file from allofmp3.com they are not doing anything illegal.
So, could you explain me where is the "illegality" of this?
Cheers.
Re:Emusic and allofmp3 (Score:4, Interesting)
There is extensive documentation of the legitimacy, legality, and safety of e-commerce transactions with allofmp3.com. Russia is a signatory of the Berne Convention, and alloofmp3.com pays the required fees to the licensing authority in Russia.
Why are you so ready to accept the RIAA's definition of "legitimacy?" Do you have any independent and supportable evaluation of allofmp3.com's legitimacy?
Good, but flawed, summary (Score:5, Interesting)
"
Online music has come a long way
Read carefully, you see either a predetermined bias (fine, it's in everything we read and the wise know how to look for it) or misunderstanding of the topic (not fine; he's offering advice here).
iTunes is a software product that runs on Windows and Macintosh computers. You can't download music "from iTunes". What he means is downloaded from the iTunes Music Store with the iTunes application on your PC and I would be fine with that if he just said that once, at the beginning of the article, but he doesn't. Most people are more careful to differentiate between the iTMS and iTunes itself.
"
You know, he writes in such a nice, matter-of-fact style that even after reading the entire article, I'm not sure whether it's bias or ignorance we're reading. But, for the record, the iPod will play pretty much any music format except ogg vorbis and WMA audio, you can get music files from any source, including some of those listed in the article, and iTunes-the-software will happily import and play other formats on your computer or upload them to your iPod, whereupon you can happily enjoy them just like any other mp3 player.
Re:Stuck, huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Magnatune.com? (Score:3, Interesting)
(price per album $3 -> ?? (you decided)..
thier downside if they don't have the huge selection you'd expect of alot of places.. but IMO if you check out thier licensing scheme and the formats you can D/L (VBR MP3, VorbisOgg, FLAC, raw WAV, and AAC) it outweighs that.
Yahoo's Music Store changed my life... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have long since been a subscriber of Yahoo's Launchcast -- their internet radio station that could play music based on your ratings. And as a work day went on, I would tag songs 1, 2, 3 or 4 stars, or even "Never Play Again". Yahoo would learn my tastes and has since then, recommended countless songs that I'd never have heard before. Bands like Nightwish, Evanescence, Lacuna Coil are bands I heard of before many, many people.
Now with the advent of the Yahoo Music Store, the same great benefits exist except that I can put them into my MP3 player and take it all to go. I admit freely however, that I convert all my music OUT of the
Now I'm paying a low monthly fee ($4.99 prepaid one year in advance) to get my grubbies on all the music I can handle. And probably, there are people that take advantage of the $5 price a LOT more than I do. But as a casual music listener, who is always looking to find new types of music that might pique my interest, Yahoo's Music Store has nailed my needs on the head solidly, and I'm glad to pay for that benefit. If you don't want to pay $5 a month to get unlimited downloads, then the RIAA has a good reason to go after you; however given their greed they want to come after me as well.
Oh well... at least if they bust down my door I can prove I'm legit
Re:Stuck, huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Stuck, huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
I can confirm the legality of allofmp3.com You can legally buy/download mp3-songs from this site if it does not breaks the law the national legislation of the country in which you will be during that moment Sorry for my english.
All it will take is the RIAA to make downloading mp3s of songs which the hold the copyrights for illegal, and then they make your ISP monitor this and then they nail you for downloading anyway. Of course, that's probably a little far fetched, but it still serves to support my original point which is that you are downloading music from an unauthorized distributor and the RIAA would be more than pleased to stop that in one way or the other.
Re:The best music store - allofmp3.com (Score:5, Interesting)
$0.17 Musicians' unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists' royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead
So, pretty much the artists are not being really paid too much, as anyone can tell you, where artists earn is in live performances. So, my opinion is that each RIAA CD people buy is only giving money to them [the RIAA] and almost nothing to the authors.
If people really want to support their artists they should go and watch them LIVE.
Re:Stuck, huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Stuck, huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
On one hand, US-based online merchants are not required to collect sales tax in states in which they do not have a physical presence; I believe this has been upheld in the courts. On the other hand, online gambling is considered illegal for clients physically located in the US (not sure whether this has made the courts or is merely the administration's public stance).
In any event, as I understand it, copyright law also exempts from penalties individuals who innocently infringe copyrights. Thus, if your understanding is that it is legal for US citizens to purchase from the Russian mp3 sites, I do not believe you would be subject to prosecution if the courts later decide otherwise.
Re:Stuck, huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems to be illegal for AllOfMP3 to deliver the songs to the USA, but not illegal for the US citizen to download. Whether it is legal or illegal, the US record industry and western musicians will not get any money for what you download.
Next you can discuss whether it is morally right or wrong to download music from AllOfMP3 that you have on an LP, or on a copy-protected CD that your computer cannot read, or that you downloaded from iTMS, or that is on a broken CD, or that was on a CD that you bought and lost - all cases where you already paid for the music, and you haven't given the music away.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Interesting)
http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/usco
So long as purchasing from all of mp3 is legal in Russia and the US purchaser intends to use it for their personal use everything is fine.
simple math : $1.60 $0.0 (Score:3, Interesting)
Oddly musicians have to pay for there recording sessions (a fixed cost usually fronted by the studios). If the musicians wrote there own music they get the publishing royalties as well.
Its not a great deal for musicians, but the publicity spending (payola?) is why most musicians fall over themselves to get a recording contract.
Re:Stuck, huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
" According to this article http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3faq.htm [museekster.com] [museekster.com] AllOfMP3 is operating legallly in Russia. Near the bottom of the page, it says Moscow police investigated them, and prosecutirs found nothing wrong."
So-called "Lolita" sites, which feature nude photos of minors and would be waaaaay over the line in the US and most countries, operate happily in Russia as well. They sell subscriptions to anybody with a credit card, but it's strictly caveat emptor -- if it's a no-no in your country, and you're caught with the material, it's your ass.
I wonder if the pedophiles in the US who subscribe to such services use the "but it's legal in Russia!" excuse.
Re:Stuck, huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
good, bad, huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Vendor lock-in is vendor lock-in.
I can't put Yahoo music on an iPod and I can't put iTunes music on my RCA MP3 player. I can look at anybody's HTML in IE, and I can look at RTF generated from Office in other office apps.
Is this just a case of: MS, bad; Apple, good.
Re:Stuck, huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
I can tell you why I prefer a subscription service over 'owning' the music.
- When I hear about a new song I may like, 10-15 seconds later I'm listening to the whole song. As a result, my collection's always growing.
- I have 3 different computers I use nearly every day. (Home computer, laptop, machine at work.) Keeping them all in sync is a bitch. With the subscription service, I don't need to keep gigs of data round. I just install the client, log in, and play.
- I have a playlist of around 700 songs right now. If I never deleted any of the songs, that list would be considerably longer. Some songs I just like for a while and then I'm not interested in them anymore.
- I've found a LOT of new music. I'm a lot pickier than most about music. Finding the right songs for me is tough. Sometimes I have to hear the songs a few times before I really get into them. (I've actually purchased a few songs based on the 30 second clip, only to find that the short clip was good but the rest of the song wasn't...)
- The playlist is the same on all the machines I use since it's centralized to the server. If I find a new song at home, it's there at work.
- I use Rhapsody and they have comedy albums as well. Personally, I'm not all that interested in hearing a comedy routine more than once or twice. I've listened to a lot of comedy on Rhapsody, but if I would have purchased it through iTunes or on CD, I would have been paying for something I only listen to once or twice then I'm done.
- If I do get a music player, Rhapsody will let me download these songs to it. It's not that interesting to me right now, but who's to say how I'll feel around Christmas time?
Somtimes cheapest isn't always the best. Really, it just depends on what your interests are.
Re:iTunes library is a well-organized directory (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Stuck, huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you sure? On what grounds?
Copyright is all about copying and giving out copies of things, not so much about receiving copies of things, and the law that applies is copyright law, not theft laws, because what's happening is not theft (regardless of what anyone would have you believe), but copyright laws.
So, perhaps you can clarify which copyright law makes this illegal and how?
For example, if I'm in an establishement that hasn't paid its ASCAP fees, I'm pretty sure I haven't violated the law. This is doubly so if that establishment isn't even required to pay the fees, as allofmp3.com is not required to pay royalties or license fees for the mp3s they distribute.
Of course, I have absolutely no desire to encourage people to break the law, so if it is illegal, please clarify.
Re:Stuck, huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Stuck, huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
It is correct that it's implausible that allofmp3.com contributes any significant amount of money back to artists. I'd be interested if anyone outside of Russia has ever received a check from that licensing organization. It may not be ethical, but ethics are not law. It would be lovely if someone would set up a direct-to-artist compensation system, so that people could support artists while (legally or illegally) working around the organizations that claim to represent them. I think that would lead to a much better ethical balance than the current systems that the RIAA and their members have set up.
Anyway, such is the ways of globalization. Companies can shop around to different countries for low wages and little worker protection. Consumers can shop around to different countries for friendly copyright laws.
Re:Stuck, huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
"Give me the power to resell the stuff I bought and I will reconsider. In this case I want to sell the licence."
I think you'd have to go back to Vinyl if you want this kind of capability. As an artist, there's no freakin' way I'd give you the power to resell my work unless you could completely guarantee me that you're only reselling what you've actually paid for. Hence the piracy problems of media that's easy to copy. I'm an artist, not a record company. My art is my time, energy, creativity, and usually money as well.
With uncontrolled digital files, there's no way to guarantee that you're not going to start up a nice reselling service by paying me once, and reselling it unlimitedly. It's just not equitable for me, the artist. Fuck record labels, I'm the one putting sounds together, not them. I want to get paid for my work.
So, if you want to resell the works I create, I have to go back to pressing records... real vinyl records, which have an extremely higher barrier to entry to copy than any other media format. And we all moved away from vinyl, by and large, because of the inadequacies of the medium (melt, shatter, scratch, wear and tear)...
It's just a new era.
You can pirate and hope to not get caught and have bad karma, or, you can pay an equitable fee to RIAA free artists. Seriously, no need to pay those bastards any more. Find new artists who don't participate in the RIAA, and when the RIAA dies from atrophy, all your favorite artists will come join the artist-equitable revolution of an RIAA-free world.