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I would like to point out that Universal already is doing a variant of this. emusic is a subsidiary of Vivendi/Uinversal and has a fair number of subscribers -- they just charge so much a month for the downloads and the files are pretty much stock MP3s. I liked the service when I signed up for a free trial, and if I listened to more music, I'd certainly subscribe: they have a lot of the older stuff I really do like and they don't charge an absurd amount for it.

BTW, you actually own the music you download -- the link above makes it clear that after you terminate your subscription your rights to the music don't end.

Phase 1: Offer to sell mp3s which can be acquired for free elsewhere.

If this EMI deal is what it looks like, then it's going to be a lot like eMusic. The difference between eMusic and KaZaA is that with eMusic, you're getting guaranteed quality and fast downloads as opposed to files encoded with a crappy but popular encoder, possibly with clicks, pops, dropouts, and deletions, and available only from one user on a 56k in Yakkestonia.

What is a bitrate? At what bitrate are EMusic's MP3s encoded at?
Bitrate is the number of bits per second used in the encoding process. A higher encoding rate usually means a larger size file, but higher quality sound. EMusic currently encodes its MP3s at 128 Kbps.
Due to high demand, EMusic is planning on increasing the bitrate at which our songs are encoded.

If you haven't checked out emusic, give it a look:

www.emusic.com

If nothing else, you can get 50 free MP3s*... but I've found a subscription to be very good value (I must have at least 4Gb of MP3s from the site)...

[* they will ask for your credit card number; as far as I can tell they're secure and respectful of privacy]

i currently subscribe to emusic (it's the best: flat fees with no download limits and no DRM) and guess who owns this very popular online music distribution network....? vivendi!

so instead of apple re-inventing the wheel maybe they just might buy emusic since they are rumored to be putting out their own music service on the net soon.

i currently subscribe to emusic (it's the best: flat fees with no download limits and no DRM) and guess who owns this very popular online music distribution network....? vivendi!

so instead of apple re-inventing the wheel maybe they just might buy emusic since they are rumored to be putting out their own music service on the net soon.

Sell me MP3s online and I'll pay

Does $15 per month sound like a bargain?

Check out EMusic. It doesn't meet all of your criteria (only 128kbps, $10/month) but it's pretty fucking good. For your $10/month, you get unlimited, fast downloads. The selection isn't the same as if you were to go to a CD store, but it's pretty large, and there are a lot of different types of music. It's best suited for people who are adventurous in their listening habits, because a lot of the artists you may not have heard of. However, a lot of my favorite musicians have albums on there and I have discovered a lot of good music on there.

But, hey, why am I surprised that people are still finding this too expensive? Hell, if they offered them at $.01/song then people would still bitch.

I was one of those people bitching until I found Emusic.com. A fair price for good music. I'm willing to pay for that. They are more like 10 cents per album. Yes, much of the stuff on there is not great, but there is enough excellent material to make it well worth $10 per month. The sound quality is not great (128 kbps encoded with Xing), but I have slight hearing loss, so it isn't that big a deal to me.

Does anyone know how they are doing financially? I think that they send half of the subscription money to the artists or their labels.

Then look @ eMusic you monkey spank!
Be prepared to be proved [wrong].

I don't care if this is redundant and costs me points, it needs to be repeated as often as possible:

Emusic has unlimited downloads of excellent indie, electronic, blues, jazz and classical ,etc. etc. music - full albums, ten bucks a month if you subscribe for a year. Well encoded except for the metal, where the distorted guitars suffer a bit from the 128k bit rate.

They have the entire Matador catalog, and oodles and oodles of other off-center selections. The first few days I was subscribed I downloaded 2 gigs of stuff and felt faint and woozy with music lust.

There's no Britney or Zeppelin, but who cares? If you're a Slashdot reader you probably have offbeat tastes, so go dig in!

Its cheaper than this AOL crap, and allows unlimited downloads and unrestricted use of the music.

The downside is that it doesn't have Top 40 type stuff, and all files are 128kB/s, but they got tons of good music if you're willing to dig a little. (It helps if you're into jazz and/or punk).

I just wanted to bring them up as an example of a site doing it right, and worth checking out. I signed up not on principle, but because they had a bunch of albums I wanted.

I'll take this opportunity to again sing the praises of emusic.com, which sounds like exactly what you want. Unlimited MP3 downloads for $10 or $15 a month. Their selection is mostly limited to non-major label stuff, but if you can do without Britney there are tons of good tunes to be had. Their jazz section especially is very good.

I've been subscribed for less than a month and in that time I've downloaded probably 250 albums, including some old stuff I never thought I'd see again (like old Mighty Mighty Bosstones on good ol' Taang records).

The minimum investment is $45, but then you can burn all the CDs you want (these are unrestricted MP3's). If you only want an album or two, they have a 50 song trial period. I think this company is going about MP3 distribution in the right way... but they got my $$$ by offering what I want, not because of their ideology.

etree.org for a directory huge lossless (true CD quality) legal audio files from FTP sites. Mostly live shows. HUGE files will fill up your space fast.

mp3.com for downloads-a-plenty. All put up there by the musicians, who want you to download them!

Emusic gets my best vote here, because their CDs have a one-click to download all songs on a CD. You can go add say 50 albums to your queue with 50 clicks each night before bed, and fill up your collection pretty fast. (non-windows people use zinf for this one-click capability.)

There's a lot of advantages to a properly legitimate service. If I could download music for ten cents a track, from servers that were always up, never served truncated files or lied about their contents, provided a database of content searchable on a variety of fields (track name, album name, producer, &c.), without DRM or any other restrictions on redistribution, and with a decent cut going to the artist, here's what would happen:

Try EMusic -- it's not all of the record companies' out-of-print material, but there's a heck of a lot of great classic stuff there and the price can't be beat ($10/month for unlimited downloads, no DRM crap). In my opinion it's the best online music service nobody's heard of. It's no good if you want the latest top-10 hits, but I wouldn't want most of that stuff even if they were giving it away free.

emusic.com -- all the MP3s you can download, $10 a month

Nice download manager, too... (the Linux one is a pain to get working, but work it does)... I think I've downloaded over 1Gb in the past two weeks. If they have music you like, it ain't bad value for money...

Check out emusic.com. I've been downloading great stuff for months. I'm in the process of downloading ~30 old jazz albums you just can't find in stores very often, if ever. It definitely falls in your price range. And yes, they have more than jazz.

I was surprised that emusic.com didn't make their list. As one of the largest online providers of legal, non-DRM MP3s on the net they should have at least garnered an honorable mention. With practically unlimited downloads for $10 or $15 a month, I'd say consumers are the big winners here. I've been using the service for the past month and my music collection, especially jazz, has grown larger than it ever could have at $15 a CD.

I'd say there are 3 main ways I discover music:

• WFUV is my real-world station of choice. It doesn't have to be that one (though I recommend it), but find a station that seems to play the stuff you like and see what they turn you on to. I find the public (usually university-affiliated) stations are the best. See also WXPN, or WWOZ if you want to hear jazz. The commercial stations are hopeless.
  
• I actually pay for a subscription to eMusic. Their selection is a little thin, but since everything past your initial monthly investment is free, you'll find that you'll give things a chance that you might pass over if it was going to cost you a purchase.
  
• Friends hipper than me: There's one guy in particular who always seems to hear about good bands before I do. I know he reads the Village Voice and Pitchfork, but I suspect he has other sources as well.
  

I originally subscribed to Emusic in 2000 to take part in the "TMBG Unlimited" offer, which was a great ploy on Emusic's part to lure in all of us geeks who will buy *anything* They Might Be Giants commits to tape. The fact that all of TMBG's catalog (excluding the stuff they released on Elektra records, of course) is there should be enough to convince anyone of Emusic's coolness. The selection of Jazz stuff is really impressive too. Where else can you download all FIFTEEN discs of Thelonious Monk's "Complete Riverside Recordings" for just $10/month?

I *do* agree, however, that they should be encoding thier stuff at bitrates higher than 128k. Some of the downloads, such as the Violent Femmes "Viva Wisconsin" sound pretty terrible at 128. But most of the other selections sound just fine for casual computer listening. Personally, I prefer having the actual CD, with cover art, liner notes and full fidelity, so I'll use Emusic as sort of a "preview" and then buy the "real thing" if I like it.

I originally subscribed to Emusic in 2000 to take part in the "TMBG Unlimited" offer, which was a great ploy on Emusic's part to lure in all of us geeks who will buy *anything* They Might Be Giants commits to tape. The fact that all of TMBG's catalog (excluding the stuff they released on Elektra records, of course) is there should be enough to convince anyone of Emusic's coolness. The selection of Jazz stuff is really impressive too. Where else can you download all FIFTEEN discs of Thelonious Monk's "Complete Riverside Recordings" for just $10/month?

I *do* agree, however, that they should be encoding thier stuff at bitrates higher than 128k. Some of the downloads, such as the Violent Femmes "Viva Wisconsin" sound pretty terrible at 128. But most of the other selections sound just fine for casual computer listening. Personally, I prefer having the actual CD, with cover art, liner notes and full fidelity, so I'll use Emusic as sort of a "preview" and then buy the "real thing" if I like it.

I originally subscribed to Emusic in 2000 to take part in the "TMBG Unlimited" offer, which was a great ploy on Emusic's part to lure in all of us geeks who will buy *anything* They Might Be Giants commits to tape. The fact that all of TMBG's catalog (excluding the stuff they released on Elektra records, of course) is there should be enough to convince anyone of Emusic's coolness. The selection of Jazz stuff is really impressive too. Where else can you download all FIFTEEN discs of Thelonious Monk's "Complete Riverside Recordings" for just $10/month?

I *do* agree, however, that they should be encoding thier stuff at bitrates higher than 128k. Some of the downloads, such as the Violent Femmes "Viva Wisconsin" sound pretty terrible at 128. But most of the other selections sound just fine for casual computer listening. Personally, I prefer having the actual CD, with cover art, liner notes and full fidelity, so I'll use Emusic as sort of a "preview" and then buy the "real thing" if I like it.

I originally subscribed to Emusic in 2000 to take part in the "TMBG Unlimited" offer, which was a great ploy on Emusic's part to lure in all of us geeks who will buy *anything* They Might Be Giants commits to tape. The fact that all of TMBG's catalog (excluding the stuff they released on Elektra records, of course) is there should be enough to convince anyone of Emusic's coolness. The selection of Jazz stuff is really impressive too. Where else can you download all FIFTEEN discs of Thelonious Monk's "Complete Riverside Recordings" for just $10/month?

I *do* agree, however, that they should be encoding thier stuff at bitrates higher than 128k. Some of the downloads, such as the Violent Femmes "Viva Wisconsin" sound pretty terrible at 128. But most of the other selections sound just fine for casual computer listening. Personally, I prefer having the actual CD, with cover art, liner notes and full fidelity, so I'll use Emusic as sort of a "preview" and then buy the "real thing" if I like it.

I've been an on-and-off subscriber - mostly on - for a long time now, and I've really enjoy exploring different artists and styles... but maybe I made a mistake using emusic.

Well, that sucks. I'm going to have to give this some thought. Given your nick I doubt you care :) but thanks for the clue anyway.

E-Music? Non-offending vendor? *scoff* Note the reason I let my Unlimited subscription lapse... Of all the media companies, Universal is probably the worst in my books because of what they did to MP3.com and the small artists who used to be able to promote themselves and earn enough money to make it worth their while to put out new music for our enjoyment there.

>People are happy with MP3-quality music, and they want to be able to buy it over the Internet. Current systems for doing that just suck.

Not again. Apple is going to re-package emusic? Seriously, in what way does emusic suck? I get the whole album. It's one click. I get all I can download (well, I hear they cut you off at 100 albums a month). I suppose it might be nice for the client to also download the artwork for free, but feh, who cares that much?

>Micro-payment (well, semi-micro; on the order of a dollar per song) will be handled through the .Mac "one click" system

Oh, I see. Sorry to say, it's dead before it hits the ground then. I hate micropayment BS, and that easily adds up to more than buying the real CD for me. Emusic has the best idea, IMHO.

>The only DRM will be the stuff we've already go built into the iPod that makes it inconvenient, though of course not impossible, to copy music off of it once it's been put on.

So, it's actually _worse_ than emusic, then? :-/

It feels to me like another "let's take an idea, slap a nicer interface on it, and charge ungodly amounts" Apple standard idea then.

Just my two cents.

(For all though that haven't seen it yet, emusic is there. Try it and be amazed. It's totally free, for the first few songs. And, trust me, their 128 kbps is about as good as any 192 kbps I've encoded at home).

A great place to download mp3's is emusic. $10/month. no DRM, no proprietary player crap, no technical restrictions. Just all you the 128k mp3s you can eat.

If you're looking for the latest stuff you heard on the radio, it's ain't here. But there is a lot of good stuff if you're willing to dig around. In addition to serious bands that didn't quite make it ( lots of They Might Be Giants and Sonic Youth, for example and checkout Airplane Man's Moanin') they have incredible breadth: In addition to some hard to find symphonic and a great Chilean Reggae band (no, really!) they have hours of George Carlin, and even Noam Chomsky if you're into that.

I have no connection with emusic, other than being a very happy customer.

I read this article and was immediately reminded of a company I bought 2 mix-yer-own CDs from a few years back: CDuctive.com.

Can't connect to their site now. And a look at their whois record seems to indicate that they were bought out by EMusic, which kinda sucks.

IIRC, CDuctive charged $0.99 per track, or $1.99 for the 10-minute-plus songs. Over all, my CDs cost around $20 and were full of goodness by folks like DJ Food, 9 Lazy 9, Coldcut, LTJ Sound Machine and others (they had several Ninja Tune artists, I believe).

Anyway ... too bad they're not around anymore.

Come on, are you still running with 640k of ram then? Just because you personally aren't using the full bandwidth, I doensn't mean I don't want to.

When you say "large files", what sort of size are we talking about? On dial-up, I'd consider anything over 2 meg to be large, because it will take serveral minutes to download. I'd like to see someone use a service like E-Music on dial-up. Or p2p.

You don't have to use the full bandwidth all of the time. That patch you were needing, or that badly-designed flash website load in seconds compared to minutes on broadband. After growing up on the UK Janet academic network, then corporate networks for the last 5 years, when I first got dial-up access at home it was horrible. I barely used it. Now, I've got always on connection, full (secure) remote access to my data and media and the ability to look at web-pages without needing a stress-ball to keep me sane.

My next home move will have a broadband availabilty check on it. I'm not going back to the dark ages.

Wow. Sounds a lot like you just invented emusic.com.

-Aaron

eMusic.com rocks...here's the info.

$10/mo unlimited downloads w/ a year agreement
128 kbps quality
fast servers
950 labels
no proprietary bs authentication...just straight up mp3s playable from any device by anyone

i don't work for them, just a very satisfied customer

try it for free

I'm feeling a bit like a broken record..but the p2p killer for me came out a while ago: www.emusic.com.

1) Not copy protected.
2) OS independant: just mp3's.
3) Inexpensive: $9.99 per month unlimited dl.
4) Fast and reliable.

At the price of a single Liquid/UMG download you get all the music you want for a month, in a format you can use and without copy protection. Thats what I'd been waiting for.

Why not use a service that offers something you actually want? Like www.emusic.com. I'm starting to feel like a whore promoting them, but they seem to be consistantly overlooked and they offer exactly what most of the slashdot comments seem to want (except maybe ogg).

1) inexpensive downloads: $9.99 per month for unlimited downloads!
2) Linux/Windows support: works with Zinf (was Freeamp)
3) Works with all standards compliant browsers (well, I haven't tried IE..;)
4) Downloads are not copy protected (you want to support something I think this is the one!).
5) Non proprietary: just good old fashioned mp3's

Now remind me why should we be getting excited about the new UMG service? Sounds like extra work at a higher price to me, but its your nickle... ;-)

However, if I'm listening to music on my computer, or in my car, the difference between 128kbps and 192kbps encoded mp3s is undetectable [1].

I'm not a musician (at least, I wouldn't call what I can squeeze out of a guitar music at this point), and I'm not a high-end audio geek. I do most of my music listening at my computer or on the bus with an MP3 CD player, or in my car. In those environments, there isn't much difference between 128kbps and 256kbps.

That said, when I do play MP3s through my stereo -- a ten-year-old mid-range Kenwood rack system -- 128kbps sounds pretty poor, 192kbps sounds fine if I'm not actively listening for MP3 artifacts, and 256kbps sounds as good as an uncompressed CD except in a few odd cases. I know people who claim to be able to detect the difference, but fortunately for me, my ears aren't that good, and frankly, CD-quality audio is overkill for the Sex Pistols anyway.

For $9.95 a month, and in my normal listening environments, eMusic is a fabulous deal, and I hope they do well. I also hope they offer higher bitrates in the future, and I'd be willing to pay for it. In the meantime, being able to legally download a few dozen albums every night or two is really nice.

I honestly think the end all of mass p2p sharing would be if the record industry purchased a familiar interface (Napster), spruced it up a bit, and make simple searching, and downloading of high quality mp3s then p2p would end. That plus the added benefit of no spy ware, and a cheap cost, like $5/month, and I honestly think people would pay that and the music industry would make a ton of money.

Have you checked out emusic before? It's been around for years, $10/month unlimited downloads of their entire library. Sure, it's mostly indy labels & jazz, but it's a great service if that's mostly what you're into, anyways.

Straight-up mp3 downloads, too. No watermarking, spyware, DRM, or special required software (they do have an optional custom download agent, but it runs on linux). Now, if only they'd offer ogg downloads ...

I don't think I would support this model. They are still using proprietary technology on a limited number of platforms to charge you, arguably, a large sum of money for audio that is tampered with (ie its encoded in a lossy format, watermarked, whatever).

There are a couple of other places offering a less restrictive service. One that I use is EMusic.com Yes, it's still MP3, but its a flat monthly rate, you have direct access to the files (ie no particular player is required and there is no authentication needed to play the files, only to download them).

What's that, you say? EMusic doesn't have the latest Britney Spears album? Of course their selection is limited but that's not a reason to not support them. Support companies like EMusic now and show the artists and record labels the kind of freedom you want from these types of services. If everybody sits back and says "Oh I can't download the new N'Sync, I'm not buying there service" they'll never get your N'Sync.

Until they loosen these silly restrictions they won't be getting my money.

(Oh, and no, I am not in any way affiliated with EMusic.com, just a customer)

If you're looking for some UMG artists, try emusic. Emusic is owned by UMG and contains quite an extensive UMG listing. For $10/month, you get some UMG artists as well as really good indie labels. If you're into industrial a couple of the labels like Metropolis and Cleopatra are there.

If you're looking for some UMG artists, try emusic. Emusic is owned by UMG and contains quite an extensive UMG listing. For $10/month, you get some UMG artists as well as really good indie labels. If you're into industrial a couple of the labels like Metropolis and Cleopatra are there.

It's been said before, and it should be said again. If you wantw true value for money, emusic are a better deal. Pure MP3s, no corrupt watermarks, and no DRM. And cheaper, too - one monthly fee equals full unlimited downloads.

If I was going to go for any of these services (I'm not, yet) that would be my choice.

CD prices are extaordinarily high given the cost of production. Look at how many CDs AOL pushes out, or how much cheapbytes sells CDs for. If I could get CDs for $1 or $2, which is still 100% more than the cost of production for a big lot of CDs (I don't care about the artwork, just give me the CD in an envelope), I would buy a lot more CDs.

Another example... look at Emusic.com. It's a great service. Fast, reliable. They give me a quality product, I give them what I feel is a reasonable amount of money.

And when record companies work somewhat like cheapbytes, producing bulk CDs, selling for $2, and giving back the artists $1, they won't have money to hype Boy Band of the Month, and will instead focus on lifting up good music that people want to listen to, music that sells itself.

The real question is, will they be able to guilt everybody into not pirating their music...

It's not a matter of guilt. It's a matter of giving customers something they value enough to spend money on.

I subscribe to emusic because they offer a selection of music I like, single-click downloads of full albums (try to get that from Kazaa), and .mp3 format that I can use however I want.

The participating record labels like it, because it gives them a revenue stream from their back catalogue that otherwise would do nothing for them

Their service doesn't carry to the newest albums; in fact, it has only a fraction of the selection of your local Tower Records, so it's never going to be all things to all people.

But the important thing is that it's good enough to get me to open my wallet. Isn't that the basis of every profitable business?

mp3.com (biggest >1.5 million tunes, now owned by Universal Vivendi who, so far, haven't messed it up too much)

IUMA (based in the USA, but international)

Besonic (based in Germany, but international)

mp3.de (based in Germany, but international)

Soundclick (based in the USA, but international)

(Garageband based in the USA, but international)

France mp3 (based in France)

Vitaminic (free + pay - based in the USA, but international)

Washington Post (yup, the newspaper)

Online Rock (based in the USA, but international)

Peoplesound based England

mp3.com Australia (not the same mp3.com - based in Australia, but international)

Emusic (pay and not really indie per se, but smaller label and re-release oriented, based in USA)

Artistlaunch (based in the USA, but international)

mp3 Poland - (Based in Poland - mostly domestic)

Good Google will searches turn up more small sites, thousands of independent artists' sites with free mp3's, some smaller labels that have free samples, many, many links pages. The biggest problem here is that it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is some incredibly good stuff out there and a lot of crap.

Use Google - many local newspaper sites have mp3 sections for local artists and there are many mp3 sites that are specifically for local talent.

If you're not familiar with mp3.com, it can be daunting in the sheer volume of material (no pun intended). And they accept material of all (musical) quality from absolute crap to incredibly good. They have many genre-based top-40 style charts and new-release charts. Walking through those is a natural first step. One concept they have that can be a big help is "stations" - really a euphemism for fan-generated lists of tunes by various artists. The tunes can be played separately or sequentially. So, when you find an artist that you like and get to their page, click on the "stations now playing" tab. On that page could be one to several "stations" where you might find additional good material that someone else has taken the time to comb out and list. I've seen lists from 2 to 200 tunes long - this can expand your options very quickly.

I have looked for ogg sources and found precious few. Unfortunately, Ogg is still a long way from critical mass.

mp3.com (biggest >1.5 million tunes, now owned by Universal Vivendi, but so far they haven't messed it up too much)

IUMA

Besonic

mp3.de

Soundclick

Garageband

France mp3

Vitaminic (free + pay)

Washington Post (yup)

Online Rock

Peoplesound

mp3.com Australia(not the same mp3.com)

Emusic (pay)

Artistlaunch

Good Google will searches turn up more small sites, thousands of independent artists' sites with free mp3's, smaller labels have free samples, many, many links pages. The biggest problem here is that it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is some incredibly good stuff out there and a lot of crap. I hope that you have a high bandwidth connection. Who needs the big labels? I don't.

Y'know, I hate to point this out to the RIAA, but blank CD-R's are used for a lot more than music. Between work and home, I maintain a collection of several thousand CD-R's that contain various kinds of archival data, (legally purchased) stock images, my own photography and design work, source code, and so on, including legally purchased MP3s (from Emusic) and legal free MP3s (from MP3.com, among others. The assumption that CD-R's sold equals music CDs pirated is just plain false.

I'm fortunate in that the majority of the music I buy comes from independent labels, so this won't affect me much, especially since, henceforth, I'll be buying all of my music from independent labels. It's not a great loss -- for each of the hundred or so acts the RIAA manages, there are thousands of better independent acts. Which is, I suspect, what they're really afraid of.

They know this and, as the Reg points out, they are banking on ALL cd's becoming copy protected in the near future (or you and I not being able to tell the difference) so that we have no choice. They are then assuming that we will just give in and pony up the cash because we can't live without music.

By and large (I have to say) they may be right. Their past experience as music publishers has shown them that the MTV crowd can and will be controlled, and will pony up the cash for one manufactured item after another.

Unless Phillips steps in to protect the CD trademark, politicians step in to protect our legal rights, other major labels refuse to lock down their cds, or the vast MTV market that all these groups focus on suddenly starts following independent bands and small-time labels who don't go for this crap they will be in the right.

The question is, how do we make the non-digerati follow the /. crowd, or at least start supproting grous such as Emusic or Cdbaby?

Try E-Music. It sounds like the future, unlimited downloads of uncrippled mp3s for a monthly fee. I've not tried them yet, but the only downside I can see is that the music is 128 kbit CBR files; I'd have prefered VBR hoving around the 128-192 range e.g. r3mix preset.

As for content, I've found at least 20 albums I would download imediatly in the short time I've looked at the site. However, I don't listen to mainstream music, so if you are looking for Britney, you might do well elsewhere.

If the music industry starts selling new MP3 songs for $1/song and old ones for $0.25/song, they would likely see their profits higher than ever before, and kazaa would simply become a fringe group of people.