Digital Music Stores Reviewed 420
Kozz writes "If you've thought about trying the new Napster 2.0, or perhaps MusicMatch, or even WAL*MART music service, you really need to read this review at BBspot.com. Brian takes a break from his standard satire fare and writes a comprehensive review not only of the previously mentioned stores, but also of BuyMusic.com, eMusic, Apple iTunes, and RealOne Rhapsody. It breaks down the features of each service, the prices, restrictions, general pros and cons, and really gives you an idea of which one(s) you should try depending on your needs."
How about... none. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hypocrisy sucks, pick a stance and stick with it.
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lds
Re:How about... none. (Score:2, Funny)
Let me guess, you also have a collection of about 10,000 mp3s. How much did the artists get for those?
Re:How about... none. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How about... none. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about... none. (Score:2, Insightful)
I think I'm doing my part.
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lds
Re:How about... none. (Score:5, Informative)
unsigned? i think you mean non-riaa-signed. there are lots and lots of non-riaa labels run by folks who sign bands because they like the music, not the sales projections.
if yr looking for non-riaa music, try:
cd baby [cdbaby.com]
the associatio of inedependent record labels [air.org.au]
riaa radar [magnetbox.com]
southern records [southern.com]
your local college radio station [yahoo.com]
or my local college station [cjsw.com]
that should keep you busy... and the riaa labels idle.
Re:How about... none. (Score:3, Interesting)
The chances in such a case are increased but by no means is there any sort of guarantee - w
Re:How about... none. (Score:2)
Re:How about... none. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How about... none. (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:How about... none. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How about... none. (Score:2)
Re:How about supporting bands you like (Score:4, Insightful)
Note if you have a song from a band and you didn't pay for it the RIAA isn't getting money, but neither is the band.
The band might only be getting a little bit from the sale, but they signed with an RIAA label and a little is better than 0.
If you like the music support those making it.
Re:How about supporting bands you like (Score:2, Insightful)
Spoken like a true RIAA propagandaist..
What about indie bands? Oh thats right, they aren't signed with the RIAA and thus don't get any money, so therefore its not music in your world.
Supporting RIAA free music (Score:5, Informative)
You can buy some music that is RIAA free. The site RIAA Radar helps you avoid paying indirectly to the RIAA.
RIAA Radar [magnetbox.com]
Or you can pay to download Music with no DRM that is RIAA free from MagnaTune.
MagnaTune [magnatune.com]
Re:How about... none. (Score:2)
I'd think online stores would be more likely to offer indie labels because the price of carrying stock is next to nothing.
Re:How about... none. (Score:5, Insightful)
For the second group above, online music buying is pretty attractive, as they can buy individual songs w/o paying 5$ for a CD single.
Personally, I'm all about CD albums - I like the physical product, and I like being able to encode it to match my own preferences. I use iTMS to buy songs occasionally to see if I like a band/album by example, or to get 'that song' that I like from that artist that I could care less about. It means I don't have to boot up the PC, run Kazaa, hunt through dupes, and get rid of incompletes.
Now, if you're into a band and can buy their music at the concert, or directly from the band, DO SO. They'll get a bigger cut. It won't show up in Billboard (via SoundScan, the aggravating labels that are on top of the jewel cases), but the artist gets more money, and the RIAA gets less.
Finally, for an example of a band that has said 'screw the labels' and gone their own road, there is Marillion. They got their fans to front the cost of the last album (and the next one, which is due out next year) many months in advance of shipping, without even hearing a thing. To have a band that is that in tune with it's fans is an amazing thing. With the exception of electronic delivery, this is the revolution in music authoring and distribution that was supposed to happen.
Re:How about... none. (Score:5, Funny)
It's so damn hypocritical when one
[/sarcasm]
Hey, if you cloned someone 750,000 times, I bet you couldn't get every clone to agree with any one opinion, let alone 750,000 individuals.
Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
SOME people are boycotting the RIAA. SOME people aren't. We all post on slashdot.
eMusic? Read the article? Hello? (Score:3, Insightful)
Their service also allows non-US users and explicitly supports Linux.
One of the indie music directors from the online college radio station linked below in my sig has bought tons of music from eMusic. If you've ever known someone in that position, I don't think I need to s
Re:How about... none. (Score:3, Funny)
No way, I saw them twice on this tour with Dimmu Borgir, Nevermore and Children of Bodom and they were awesome, they kicked the asses of pretty much any ba...
Re:How about... none. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not about taking down the RIAA, it's about them providing the services we want. They're starting to do that. If they make money on these services, we'll all end up okay.
Lighten up.
Wal-Mart? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wal-Mart is going to be the Microsoft of the general retailer consumer good and grocery markets, I swear.
Re:Wal-Mart? (Score:5, Funny)
Its going to be hard to undercut free. But if wal-mart ever start paying people to download mp3s, I'll be there.
Re:Wal-Mart? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wal-Mart? (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed. Welcome to capitalism.
The Fast Company article is excellent! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wal-Mart? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wal-Mart? (Score:5, Funny)
You didn't hear it from me, but Wal-Mart is in secret talks with Sony to produce walking Greeter Robots [sony.net], Checkout Clerk Robots, Stockboy Robots, Cleanup Robots, and Union-Buster Robots! In related news, McDonalds is laying off 95% of their human resource grunts to be replaced by Burger Flipping Bots [marshallbrain.com], and Spit-in-a-Cops-Burger Bots.
Getting rid of all those pesky human employees means much, much lower prices for... for... hey, where did all the customers go? Waiting in breadlines?
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Re:Wal-Mart? (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I love both ATMs and the self-check out express lines. I just think they're more conven
Re:Wal-Mart? (Score:3, Funny)
Link 1 [townhall.com]
Link 2 [reason.com]
Link 3 [sbsc.org]
(Quoted from your article:)
By selling a gallon of kosher dills for less than most grocers sell a quart, Wal-Mart may have provided a ser-vice for its customers. But what did it do for Vlasic? The pickle maker had spent decades convincing customers that they should pay a premium for its brand.
So, Wal-Mart demonstrates that Vlasic pickles aren't worth quite as much as Vlasic claims, and w
Re:Wal-Mart? (Score:3, Insightful)
Since Wal-Mart has a superior
Re:Wal-Mart? (Score:3, Interesting)
Highly Windows-Centric (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Highly Windows-Centric (Score:4, Funny)
I have had only one problem with my Itunes for windows, its too easy to spend a bunch on music (I spent $120 on itunes last month!)
I also think that the sharing of playlists from different people over the network is really cool.
Re:Highly Windows-Centric (Score:2, Interesting)
I've found emusic great for older jazz artists, finding albums I wouldn't have otherwise been able to get my hands on. It almost seems a bit cheap in fact, but then I remember they have essentially zero costs once they've ripped the CD.
One thing I would really really like is access to the cover artwork and linear notes
Re:Highly Windows-Centric (Score:3, Interesting)
I think iTunes will provide album art, but yes, liner notes would be a big plus.
Frankly, I wasn't impressed by eMusic - maybe my tastes are a bit antiquated, but their library was just as bad as iTunes when it came to older back-catalog recordings. No Four Freshmen, no Julie London, no Nat Cole for chrissakes (well, there was ONE compilation CD.) Getting high-quality MP3
Re:Highly Windows-Centric (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, I personally would rather buy music from iTunes, because the M4P format has been cracked. That means that I can completely un-DRM the music and listen in any AAC-supporting player of my choice, on any platform. You don't have that freedom (yet) with WMA.
Re:Highly Windows-Centric (Score:5, Insightful)
Not true. With iTunes you can burn a CD and play that on any CD player, totally DRM-free. If you want to you can also re-rip those songs off the CD into any format you choose, again totally DRM-free. Then they can be played on any player you want.
The M4P format has not been cracked at all. What was done was someone patched the binaries of iTunes so that they could capture the unencrypted data while it was being played (or streamed, I forget which). That data can then be re-captured into a DRM-free format. It's basically similar to burning a CD and then ripping it, without the CD step.
The advantages to iTunes and the iTunes Music Store are the awesome user interface, the minimal DRM, the song selection, the exclusive tracks. the iPod, its cross-platform nature, and the fact that it will be around for a while considering it has at least 50% of the market.
Re:Highly Windows-Centric (Score:5, Insightful)
But AAC is a lossy format which you'd be burning to a CD and then re-encoding into probably another lossy format (MP3). Quality will be crappy. Where are the music services that offer FLAC downloads or some other lossless music file format with or without DRM? The RIAA wants them to charge based on what a CD with 12-15 tracks would cost, but fails to properly warn the public that what they're downloading is far inferior to the audio quality you'd get with a real CD. Personally a cheap knock-off 192kbps mp3 or AAC encoded music track is only worth about 5 cents to me. If it was in FLAC I'd consider it for $1 since if I uncompressed it I'd have the exact same thing I'd get with the CD.
In theory you are correct (Score:3, Interesting)
It now makes me wonder how much quality is in the CD's we buy. I'm still trying to determine if some of my older CD's from the 80's have begun to sound worse over time. Or were some j
Re:Highly Windows-Centric (Score:3, Insightful)
The DRM in the iTunes Music Store is more of a speed bump than a road block. It's pretty much the bare minimum needed to be able to sell the music. You hardly even notice it because it is so minimal. I bet you can count on one hand the number of people who LEGALLY need to burn a playlist to
Re:Highly Windows-Centric (Score:3, Interesting)
I shall have to wonder how I keep loading up my Creative Nomad II from iTunes. It could be that I'm on a Mac and not on a PC.
I found a great new music service! (Score:5, Funny)
BTW: Hot Tip! Check out that Metallica band. They have lots of stuff on Kazaa and it all rocks!
you aren't buying anything, it's a service (Score:5, Insightful)
Great, not only is only 128k, it's probably lower quality than OGG, and I'm guessing that if you're computer hard drive were to fail (likely) you would lose every song you 'bought' because the license file is probably tied to your OS in some way.
Maybe paying $10/month and using it like a radio station wouldn't be to bad, but letting people think that they 'bought' the song when you have no ability to make back up copies is stupid. Yes it mentioned burning it to a CD, but that would be an extra step re-encoding it back into the PC, and the quality would be lower.
Re:you aren't buying anything, it's a service (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:you aren't buying anything, it's a service (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:you aren't buying anything, it's a service (Score:5, Insightful)
> If you break a CD from the store, are they obligated to give you a new one? What if it gets stolen? This is no different from the way it's been in the past.
I'm not willing to accept that. If it was, indeed physical property I was buying that I could do what I want with, I might buy that argument. But according to the RIAA, I don't own the song - I have been issued a limited license to use it. Because of this restriction, I figure the least they can do is have some sort of "locker" or "purchase history" where I can re-download songs I've purchased licenses to in the past. I've sever other services that do this (font stores, stock photo libraries, etc) - why not digital music? Perhaps they could charge a *reasonable* bandwidth fee for the extra download(s)?
Re:you aren't buying anything, it's a service (Score:2, Interesting)
WMA - depends on the Music Store, for example, WalMart... if you format your hard disc / change your PC, you cannot play your music on your box. The music file is tied to a license which is downloaded the first time you play the music IIRC.
Re:you aren't buying anything, it's a service (Score:3, Informative)
Windows Media Player has a neat little feature called "License Manager" which lets you backup/restore the license.
Re:you aren't buying anything, it's a service (Score:2, Informative)
So, if you buy from ANY of these stores, be sure that you're first action (even b
Re:you aren't buying anything, it's a service (Score:2)
Perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd be glad to pay for music online. I want to be able to buy music online. I'm willing to pay a fair price. Otherwise, I can't easily get music, because, as an ethical matter, I'm unwilling to play music I haven't acquired legally.
But these services don't sell music. They rent licenses to play music, and give no assurance the license will remain in existence if they go out of business, or my hard drive goes tits up, or I move to Canada, or I get a new portable.
iTunes does allow me to preserve a copy if I'm willing to sacrifice a CD-RW on the way to getting it on my hard drive where it's actually convenient.
But if I'm going to do all that, I'd just as soon buy a CD -- iTunes isn't that much less expensive -- and be able to re-rip if I decide to change formats in the future. (Eventually storage will be cheap enough for me to store FLACs or another lossless form of CDs on my hard drive.)
So buying online gives me instant gratification but future frustration. Buying in a store takes longer, but gives me a format that remains usable into the future, because I can control the format. So what's the compelling reason to buy online for me?
Try cdbaby.com (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: all though this read like an ad, its not. Im just a satisfied customer.
This is a great alternative to emusic and such pay for play setups where you waste a quota trying to find music you like.
Re:Try cdbaby.com (Score:2)
Re:Try cdbaby.com (Score:2)
Is there a standard? (Score:5, Interesting)
What I find interesting is that some songs are available in one service, but not others. So if you think of downloadable mu$ic as equivalent of a physical music store, it's not quite, becase a CD is a CD, and no matter where you buy it, you can play/rip it anywhere, on anything (capable of playing CD's, that is).
So there's still an insentive to buy CD's. But not as much, not enough to keep CD stores in business, I would not be surprised if they start closing soon. After that happens - what do you do to get a song that's only available from one service, but not the other?
Will there ever be a way to buy once play anywhere?
Re:Is there a standard? (Score:4, Interesting)
1. I like to have a physical product
2. Physical product serves as a backup should my data become unuseable.
3. Lyrics, artist information, etc. are nice to have in cd inserts
4. I can rip to whatever format I want, I'm not limited by whatever format the online store provides me. This means that future formats can be utilized without a lossy conversion process.
These things being said, I do value the online store if for no other reason than I can preview most tracks from the comfort of my home.
Digital music?! (Score:4, Insightful)
If I have to deal with one more WMA file I think I'll go nuts.
The simple fact is, most people like to have a 'hard' copy of their favourite music, and the only reason that many don't buy them is because of the price.
If it were $5 a CD I would buy every album I liked (and I would buy a hell of a lot). What they really nede to do to increase sales is introduce some sort of 'decent' rewards program, where the more often you buy music, the cheaper it is for you. (not the crappy buy 4 CD's and you can have one of these UNHEARD of bands albums!)
P2P is winning not because people *want* to steal, but because the prices of CD's are too prohibitive for many people, and many find it offensive that the bands get so littl of the profit!
They need a policy change, NOT a retailer change.
Re:Digital music?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Digital music?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Wonderful logic.
I support my favorite artists by seeing them live. I buy their CD's, and if they aren't making money off them that's their problem. The market will work itself out.
Re:Digital music?! (Score:2)
Re:Digital music?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparantly you are not familiar with iTunes?
The simple fact is, most people like to have a 'hard' copy of their favourite music, and the only reason that many don't buy them is because of the price.
What exactly is a 'hard' copy? I get the feeling most people are just fine with a digital file on their hard drive.
If it were $5 a CD I would buy every album I liked
Yeah, and if it were 25 cents a CD, I would buy every album I liked
P2P is winning not because people *want* to steal, but because the prices of CD's are too prohibitive for many people, and many find it offensive that the bands get so littl of the profit!
They need a policy change, NOT a retailer change.
They've MADE a policy change! Was there a way to buy music like iTunes before iTunes? No. You rented the music, or you downloaded it off a P2P network (at your own risk). People said, give us a way to easily buy the music from you for a reasonable price, and we will. Apple listened and delivered. End of story.
Their selection will grow, their clout with the labels will grow, we will see competition amongst the online music retailers like Apple, and we have a good shot of 'winning.'
I don't think it's reasonable for someone to justify downloading music off P2P networks for free by saying, "Well, if they sold me the albums for $X then I'd stop downloading them for free!"
I'm satisfied with iTunes, and I put pressure on my favorite artists and their labels to sell their albums on iTunes.
AND I DON'T EVEN OWN AN IPOD!
The times they are a changin? (Score:4, Interesting)
Audible.com comment (Score:5, Interesting)
I rushed into the purchase without reading the fine print. I didn't realize I was buying a proprietary "MP3 quality" recording and not an actual MP3 file. I didn't realize I had to download Audible.com software to listen to and manipulate the audio file.
The audio software failed to recognize my CD burner, so I requested and received a refund. I was miffed at not having an MP3 file and the prospect of spending time with a tech support person to route around a problem that wouldn't exist if I had been given an MP3 file to begin with.
As luck would have it, I bought the book on *CD* from the manufacturer for only $2 more, plus $6 standard shipping, and it arrived today.
Re:Audible.com comment (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Audible.com comment (Score:2)
Re:Audible.com comment (Score:3, Interesting)
There was a time when that theory meant you wouldn't be burning MP3 to an audio CDROM. Content evolves, new formats come out, new software is needed to manipulate these formats.
I don't see how loading iTunes to buy and burn a CDROM is any different than loading any other CDROM burning software to burn MP3's as audio CD's.
Re:Audible.com comment (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's the issue. When MP3 becomes outdated, I'm certain I'll have many choices for software that will convert to the next standard. I have no such guarantees with proprietary formats exclusive to a single company.
That's why iTunes has the out. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Audible.com comment (Score:2)
There's a place for brick and mortar (Score:5, Insightful)
What you don't get is the rustic appeal of going into a music store and enjoying the crowd and ambience. It's not the same when you're quoting NIN lyrics to a friend while passing by people who are shopping the contemporary christian aisle. Not the same as being able to watch people in goth clothing walk by. Not the same as being able to say "Chris I-Suck" (Chris Isaak) in public.
Shop online for convenience, but it's still an experience. Brick and mortar stores still have something to offer. If nothing else, it makes getting music a social event instead of a personal thing. If you're the type to get the latest Britney Spears album, though...you may want to buy online and save yourself some ridicule.
Re:There's a place for brick and mortar (Score:3, Interesting)
Jeez, now I remember why I hate going into stores that sell CDs. Going to the dentist to have your wisdom teeth removed is an experience too, it doesn't mean that I am volunteering to have any other teeth ripped out of my head.
You and your scruffy, NIN-quoting, black-clothes-wearing haters might enjoy going to the music store to make fun of all the people with actual lives, but the rest of us would just as soon skip all that fun and just get our CDs, by mail preferably. The last thing that I want to do
Caveat emptor (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I have read, about 45% of the final sales price of a CD is based on retail, manufacturing and distribution costs. If that is so, then the current online offerings actually raise the profit margin to record labels and the RIAA without benefiting the artists at all. Should I be grateful? I think not.
There is tremendous potential here for artists to go directly to consumers. The costs of setting up a digital recording studio are no longer prohibitive, though they are not trivial. It is reasonable to expect that sites will spring up soon enough to provide the infrastructure that independent artists need to distribute their music and collect on the sales with a reasonable overhead. The current online stores seem to be a last ditch attempt to maintain control by the music industry. Nothing surprising there, but we should think very hard about whether we want to support a timid change when the potential for radical change exists.
Re:Caveat emptor (Score:3, Insightful)
Other countries (Score:2)
Ugh. So frustrating. So many updates to iTunes, yet I still cannot purchase music. If the retailers aren't careful, they might forget that they are excluding 1/2 the world's market by not permitting EC, UK, Canadian and Asian countries from participating.
Then again, you just cannot trust those crazy beaver loving weirdos to the North [wikipedia.org]. There's trouble brewing up there in Soviet Canuckistan [wikipedia.org].
EULA Reviews? (Score:3, Insightful)
The next .com bust? (Score:3, Interesting)
I find it laughable that people would actually spend $1 to buy a song. That's insane. For a full CD, you're almost talking $15...for songs I can only listen to on my computer...in a lousy format...and I don't get any case, media, or art with it. Thank you, I'd rather pay the $13 and take my music wherever I want to. Does anyone else find it shocking that these stores are actually able to stay afloat?
Let's give it a year. I'd love to see an "online music store" year in review next December. Who will stand and who will fall?
Danger Danger (Score:2)
Its like music crack. They keep make it easier to find songs too..
itunes drm is easily overcome (Score:5, Informative)
i don't know if you can do this with any other service. this alone makes iTMS a great choice. i know with any windows media format you're gonna have lots of restrictions.
Re:itunes drm is easily overcome (Score:2, Informative)
Uhhhhh, or step 2 could just be "rerip the CD in iTunes". If that's too hard for anyone, I'm not sure how th
Re:itunes drm is easily overcome (Score:2)
Itunes streaming music (Score:5, Funny)
Someone who wants a player to listen to their
Dammit you mean all that streaming music i have been listening to in iTunes was in my head the whole time. Well at least im a lot more creative than i thought i was:)
EMusic used to be truly awesome... (Score:5, Informative)
Forget the 40 song limit -- it used to be 'unlimited', which in practice meant 2000 tracks a month.
At one point the download manager files were an open format, and they encouraged third party download managers...
Then they decided to encrypt the files, and to their credit released download managers for Windows, Mac and Linux at the same time.
Unfortunately all three were riddled with bugs and oversights. To this day the reliability of downloads is decidedly sub-par.
If you do use EMusic, there's a perl script available which will decrypt the files and launch wget for you -- it's far more reliable than the official download manager.
But personally I ended my subscription when the new limits were introduced... more because of their lousy approach to customer service than anything else. (They actually had the audacity to remove the message boards completely when they announced the changes).
They won't let go (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with all the online music stores is
Don't think that the RIAA doesn't "get it". They do. They just don't want you to "get it". "It" being music at a reasonable price in the format you want without restrictions on how you can use it.
The RIAA's (their members', actually) business is based on control. They want to control what you hear and how you hear it. Without this control, their entire business model breaks. If any old artist can self-publish online (or be published online by a 3rd party for a reasonable fee) with world-wide exposure
Everyone knows what the public wants:
- Roach
Stop hitting yourselves in the head. (Score:5, Interesting)
I see a lot of people complaining in this story about restricted formats, money still going to the RIAA, and Windows-only. None of you read the article.
eMusic gives you unrestricted VBR MP3s at well under a dollar per song. They deal largely with independent artists who are not beholden to the RIAA, which is a big part of why they can offer these distribution terms. They also explicitly support Linux, as well as Windows and Mac OS.
"But I don't like that music!" Well, you _should_
Yeah, it takes more effort to find music, but I've been on both sides of the fence and I've found the indie side to be far more rewarding. Bands like Enon, Quasi, El Guapo, Freezepop, Call and Response, Stereo Total...they will probably never hit mainstream radio, and there's absolutely no good reason why.
With a band like Freezepop, you don't even need an eMusic! Their CDs are cheap, and you can download full MP3s of many of their songs from their own site for free. Lifestyle, a side project of one of their members, has an entire album's worth of tracks that basically fall in between the first and upcoming second album. All for free.
There's plenty of crap in indie too, of course. Here, I'll have to give a blatant plug to the site linked in my sig, wmbc.umbc.edu. We are currently on hiatus until the spring, but you can listen to the automated music stream that usually fills in between live DJs. You can also look at our Top 30 chart, which is actually a representation of the 30 albums the DJs chose to play the most, not a pre-mandated playlist. And hey, we use Debian! And our music database software is available on freshmeat!
See, you can discover independent music the same way you used to discover mainstream. There are many other stations like ours (and I'll admit that some are probably better). You could also take eMusic up on their 50 free tracks offer, or check out cmj.com, where most college stations report their top 30. I'm almost positive you'll find something you like, and you don't have to feel bad for buying it.
Walmart - only listen on one computer (Score:5, Informative)
That's not true -- with Wal-Mart's music downloads, you can only listen on one computer. I downloaded a song on my laptop, then when I copied it to my desktop and tried to play it there, I got this "License Acquisition" dialog box:
So it's pretty clear to me that I'm only allowed to play a song I downloaded on one PC (although I'm allowed, according to the download page, to back it up to a couple other computers, whatever they mean by that).
Re:Walmart - only listen on one computer (Score:3, Informative)
On this page, they tell you that "Download music to 1 computer and back up to up to two additional computers". I guess the "two additional computers" means you're allowed to copy the file to two more computers, besides the 1 you're allowed to play the file on. God forbid Wal-mart stops by your house and see's the file sitting on four computers! Not that it will play anywhere but the first computer...
Looking for indie music? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://audiolunchbox.com [audiolunchbox.com]
I haven't bought anything yet (and I have no relation to the company), but I'm keeping my eye on it.
-h3
my 2 cents on Rhapsody (Score:3, Interesting)
First, you can do all the normal stuff you'd expect from an on-demand streaming service; make playlists of songs, add entire albums to your library, listen to pre-programmed channels, or create your own channels by selecting a list of artists, etc.
The sound quality is high and the connections reliable. It's not for dial-up users. You need broadband.
In addition to streaming the songs most can be burned to CD for 79 cents/each. I seldom use this feature. I use this gadget [rca.com] to get the audio from my PC to the stereo while streaming.
Here's what really makes Rhapsody valuable to me: The Rhapsody desktop app integrates the Muze [muze.com] database, the same database you'll find at music store kiosks for doing searches. With this you can do searches by artist, album, and song title. Also, for each artist you see similar artists, influencers, and followers, all hyperlinked together. I can spend hours just following links among artists, finding music new to me that I'm more likely to like.
Music is also categorized by genre, with a playlist of typical songs for the genre and a list of albums and artists considered important to the genre.
A small negative: I'd like to see the ability to search by genre and include boolean expressions in the search.
Price: $10/month ($8 if paid quarterly). Not bad.
A good service no one has mentioned yet (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I refuse to buy from these stores.. (Score:2)
OV, good it maybe, but its not going to happen.
Secondly, there is no DRM available for O.V, so the MPAA and other music associations will never let online Stores distribute music this way.
No DRM == No distribution.
Re:I refuse to buy from these stores.. (Score:2)
I meant the RIAA, of course.
You are going to be waiting a long time (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue at the end of the day is this - when I go on Kazaa and download a song - what format is it likely to be in?
Re:You mean WMA? (Score:4, Informative)
Link [hydrogenaudio.org]
Re:doesn't apply (Score:5, Informative)
Copyright. Lets take the Beatles as an example. Apple Corps (the record label) own the Beatles tunes, the recordings of these tunes are licensed to EMI Europe for sale through out ECMA, and to Capitol Records (basically EMI again, but a legal entity in it's own right). Sony own the lyrics.
So, a record label usually owns the rights to a particular recording of a tune, the tune itself belongs to someone else and the lyrics and belong to a third party.
Now US record companies (even though they tend to have European branches, or they are owned by European labels) only have the rights to sell recordings within the US (and maybe Canada).
So when iTunes, MusicMatch, Walmart et al deal with the labels they are only licensing the rights to resell the tracks in the US. If they sell outside the US, they're breaking their license agreement. Want to know why you can't search on lyrics in stores? Because they'd need to license the lyrics from yet another company.
Why is this such a pain? Mainly because the US labels won't share with Europe, and vice versa. Each region has to show its own profit, and sharing is bad for that. The licensing and royalty rules are horribly complicated, I've spent a lot of time doing various reporting tools for music promotional sites to cope with this.
Re:doesn't apply (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Properitor: NuClear Records, Lindon, Utah (Score:3, Informative)
Ultimately, I think the entire landscape of music sales is changing. That means, retail music stores need to rethink how they sell their music, and online stores will do so too. (Does anyone really believe we need as many online music stores as we have popping up all over the place? It's just a "Quick
uh oh (Score:3, Funny)