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Amazon are not the only game in town (although a welcome addition).. personally I quite like emusic which provides plenty of drm free mp3's for a small subscription fee..

http://www.emusic.com/

You can of course keep your downloaded mp3's after your subscription ends and while you remain a member you can re-download everything you previously downloaded as many times as you want.

You wont get the latest top of the tops crap but you will find lots of really great music in many genres such as jazz, reggae, folk, classical, rap, rock and much more.

Even better they provide a download manager for linux! From their FAQ..
Q. Does DLM 4.0 work with Vista, Linux?
A. Yes, DLM 4.0 has been tested to work with Windows 98 SE, NT 4.0, 2000, XP and Vista. As well as Mac OS X (Intel & PPC), Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva with KDE and Gnome interfaces.

eMusic music search/browse page

I love emusic, but they don't offer the mass-marketed tripe that the most lucrative market wants. They want Akon, not .....umm......well, I can't think of any band obscure enough to make my point while known enough to be recognized. Imagine that.

Me, I'm more likely to buy something like Wylie And The Wild West.

Here's a better deal for you - 100 free downloads - http://www.emusic.com/ge :)

Have you checked out Emusic Remote? It's the new replacement Mozilla-based replacement for the old Download Manager application. Poking around it seems a lot nicer, but I haven't used it extensively yet since I ran out of tracks for the month before it was released.

I gave up on EMusic/J since it was regularly failing downloads or saving partial tracks for me, so I had been downloading the tracks individually instead.

There's already been DRM free music for quite a while. People like to complain that the music isn't available online without DRM, but aren't willing to vote with their wallet, and stop buying music from bands and labels that require DRM to download songs. Currently I get all my music from eMusic. It doesn't have everything I want, but it does have a lot of good music. I'd rather have music for about $3-$5 an album, than have to put up with DRM'd files, or paying $15 for a single album on CD.

But this is hardly the first DRM-free music download service. I've used eMusic off and on for years. How does this compare and how does it improve on the other DRM-free services that already exist? In the past, the main complaint about such services was the lack of mainstream music from major labels. Won't this be the same for Amazon's offering?

Ya, it can be a little difficult to navigate before you sign up. I'm assuming they figure most people who are interested would go for the free downloads right away. But you can still check it out, you just have to dig around. Here's a link that will get you there.

eMusic has music by many well-known artists. Not so much of the current hits, admittedly. See top rock/pop artists for this month.

Apple seem to be the only people who've managed a paid digital music store with any success. eMusic has been going forever without any real traction, Napster continues to lose money, meanwhile you can get free, legal major label music from places like imeem.com which is all ad supported.

iPods do have gapless playback, UMS, and they work with other music stores such as Emusic and Beatport.

One of the ways I find bands is by listening to internet radio like somafm, or to college radio stations, the local one here is wiux (they do net streaming). Pandora is great too, just put in who you like and they will recommend and play new music.

Also it is good to support your local scene, find out where indie bands play then listen to the ones coming on myspace, and go see them. It's nice because it is generally way cheaper to see an indie band than going to a mainstream artist's show.

Also good: emusic, for something like $15 a month you get 50 songs or so. Pretty damn cheap. They have newsletters and stuff, plus as you download CDs, they can match you up with other people who have similar tastes and you can see what they like. Plus there are popularity charts, etc.

And worse yet, sometimes they edit out things that aren't offensive at all.

Damn straight. I guess I won't be shopping at Wal Mart after all. I guess I'll have to continue paying $0.22 per DRM-free song through eMusic.

(Yeah, I know, 99+% of the indie music there sucks, but some of it is really good, and I don't feel ripped off when I only paid a quarter for a song that sucks)

If you like music, hate the RIAA, and want to support the artists, instead of going "pirate", go here.

It's probably more effective to buy non-RIAA music than to get free non-RIAA music. Somebody else making money really sends a message to the RIAA. Music closer to the mainstream might make the point hit home better.

Of course, the best music for you to consume is the music you like best. Music is kind of like food, though: Once you get used to organic vegan health food (ick!), you can't stomach greasy mass-produced stuff anymore. Well, I still like greasy mass-produced food, but I can't tolerate Metallica or Faith Hill. Now while I eat a cheeseburger, I listen to State Of Corruption or John Prine.

I don't buy RIAA-related music; if I want to hear some, I borrow the CD from the state library system.

Links for non-RIAA music:
http://www.riaaradar.com/ -- Look up a CD you want to buy and see if it's RIAA-affiliated
http://www.emusic.com/ -- Commercial music from non-RIAA labels, cheap, in DRM-free MP3s
http://garageband.com/
http://www.stage.fm/

It's easy to find indie country music that I like; loads of it gets played on Sirius Outlaw Country. Metal, OTOH, is a littel more difficult. So...anybody want to recommend some good indie hard rock / metal for someone who like Corrosion Of Conformity, Type O Negative, Black Sabbath, Monster Magnet, Tool, Anthrax, Rammstein, Megadeth, and Faith No More?

You're mistaken about not being able to see the catalog:

http://www.emusic.com/browse/all.html

As far as availability of popular stuff, it's true you don't get stuff from the big 4, but there's plenty of popular music not put out by them (Matador and Merge are fairly substantial labels and on eMusic). What have I gotten from them recently?

- Paul McCartney/Memory Almost Full
- The Arcade Fire/Neon Bible and Funeral
- Spoon/Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and Gimme Fiction
- The Decemberists/Picaresque and Her Majesty
- Cat Power/The Greatest and You Are Free
- Camera Obscura/Let's Get Out Of This Country
- The National/Boxer
- Stars/In Our Bedroom and Do You Trust Your Friends
- Interpol/Antics and Turn Out The Bright Lights
- Neko Case/Fox Confessor
- Of Montreal/Hissing Fauna and Satanic Panic
- New Pornographers/Twin Cinema and Electric Version

These aren't for the most part Top 40 acts, but ain't complete unknowns either.

Amarok is lighter than iTunes, it can sync iPod's flawlessly, (rip and put on music from any computer, any iPod) iTunes is not a reason to stay on Mac/Windows.

Are they cheaper than eMusic?

Files from legal, DRM-free download sites like http://www.emusic.com/ will probably fall into this trap as well.

You could look at eMusic

They let you burn songs to CD any number of times.
They charge less per song than Apple.
They keep a download history, so if you lose the track somehow, you can just go get it again.

Oh yeah, and they sell unprotected mp3's. :)

You mean like http://www.emusic.com/? Funny, I've been buying DRM-free music from those "starving artists" since way back, and they seem to be doing perfectly fine as is.

The RIAA is not the government. They do not dole out authority; we, the consumer, do. I am perfectly willing to pay for my music. I will not, however, pay the RIAA. The fewer artists who sign to the RIAA, the more artists go independent, which leaves more artists I can buy music from and feel good about it. When I buy music from these artists, I know they're getting money. I know I'm paying the money to a free man or woman, not one who sold their life into indentured servitude. I know they're making more then 2% of the money I pay them, I know they're not driving down other independent artists with legal action. As a consumer, I don't care whether they like the way I behave. If I do something illegal, I would, in fact, expect the law to be enforced. There is nothing, however, which forces a false choice of "buy RIAA, never listen to music, or commit copyright infringement." The RIAA is not the only organization which deals in music, as much as they'd like to be. Have you ever seen http://wwww.magnatune.com/ or http://www.emusic.com? Many independent artists are even sold on Amazon! Payola, questionable lobbying regarding copyright extension, and illegitimate tactics regarding lawsuits (including the prosecution of those who were either known (or should have been known) known to be not guilty along with those suspected to be) make the RIAA the problem, not the solution.

I have an old Linux version of the download manager, but you won't need it. Yesterday I discovered that you can use emusic without using their download manager.

1. Sign in
2. Click "Your account"
3. Click "Change download manager" on the left side
4. Click "Disable eMusic Download Manager"
5. ???
6. Profit!

They're working on a new version of the manager that runs Linux: http://developer.emusic.com/ and I know that there's also a Python eMusic, Dromanova, that's getting rave reviews and can be downloaded here: http://boykin.acis.ufl.edu/?p=97

This album is available DRM-free from emusic (I know, I was shocked too!)

http://www.emusic.com/album/11044/11044254.html

Those who are not so technically minded and buy the thing candidly thinking that they will come home and install World of Warcraft or Photoshop and use iTunes will be having a hard time with this...

Yes, there are *some* people who will not produce information-products (including software, music, images, or what-have-you) if they cannot globally enforce copy restrictions. Agreed. Such people should, IMO, go in to a different line of work. That is perfectly acceptable for a very simple reason: there will be more than enough people who find good reasons to produce such works in the absence of copyright restrictions. Some people will find an alternative means of making money off freely-duplicated works, and others just because they are altruistic.

Remember that people pay good money for their hardware, and copyright restrictions mean they cannot make full use of it. Copyright isn't actually a "freedom" for the person producing a work....people will still be completely free to produce works without copyright restrictions. Copright may be a "benefit" to the producers of a work (though in practice it is not; it is only a benefit to the distributors of the work, but I won't get into that here), but to call it a "freedom" is incorrect. Copyright law is a restriction on freedom to everyone in the world, and if such a freedom is going to be globally sacrificed, there had better be a damn good reason for it.

The only reason you have given is the false premise that without these restrictions, no-one will produce knowledge-products. Not only is this false in theory (since some people will produce stuff for free, and since some people will find ways of making money off knowledge-products in the absence of copyright restrictions), but there are lots of examples of businesses that make money off a free end-product, and of profoundly useful products made without any profit motive. And there are more where those came from.

That last set of links is pretty important. Google gives all of its services away for free, and yet has a market cap of over 100 billion. Not only are there business models built around free products, but they are very profitable and fiercely competitive.

Also check out this and this. Copyright is still there, but it is unenforced upon the consumer. It will be interesting to see how this selective approach to enforcement will pan out.

It is true that a farmer who gives away his crops for free would go broke, and if farmers could not legally force people to pay for their products then there would be no farmers. However, this observation not apply to information products. Information is fundamentally different from physical products, and business models surrounding it wind up taking a different form than traditional business models (a form which includes a free and/or freely redistributable product).

What we are dealing with is a new kind of abundance. Oxygen is an abundant resource, (anyone can get it for free because it just never runs out). Traditional capitalistic wisdom says that it is not possible to build a business around such resources, and further that no one will produce them because of that. Information is also abundant, once it exists (since it can be duplicated at zero cost by anyone). But it is also strangely non-abundant, since it's initial production requires an expenditure of resources. Traditional capitalistic models have a very hard time categorizing it...is it abundant or isn't it? Copyright law is an attempt at forcing it in to the "limited" category so that the traditional models wil

When I was young, my Dad told me the RIAA was good because they took care to ensure our music was reproduced with as high fidelity as possible. For example, the RIAA worked with the recording industry to establish techniques and standards for "storing" bass on vinyl by attenuating it, but incorporating offsetting amplification to restore the bass to its correct presence allowing for more music on a single vinyl disk. Thus the RIAA was there to ensure or help ensure the best possible music experience.

Oh how things seemed to have changed. I don't know if my Dad was correct (I didn't do the research), but regardless, the RIAA certainly seems to be the antithesis to the "old" RIAA. Today the RIAA sounds more and more like organized crime, except that to date, for some reason, every thing they do seems to be deemed legal.

So, it seems the RIAA has become evil. It's probably time people tried to fulfill their musical quests elsewhere as much as it may be possible. If you still need and want to listen to Janet Jackson, so be it, but:

Someone on slashdot turned me onto this before, I feel it important others check it out... I've signed up and have been a member of emusic for a while now, and now have over 300 non-drm'ed mp3s and love it. And, I don't have to worry about the RIAA, at least I don't think I do. After reading their staked "claims" in the article, I'm not so sure. Regardless, should it actually be so, check emusic out.

http://www.emusic.com/?

(relatively cheap, drm free)

I just subscribed to http://emusic.com/. EVERYTHING they sell is DRM free, everything is sold as MP3. You can sign up for a trial and down load 25 songs. If you don't like it and cancel with in 2 weeks you get to keep the 25 songs for free. If you do like it keep your subscription. For $10 a month you get 30 songs. That's less then 35 cents per song, a third that cost of other online stores.

That's the good news. The bad news is that you won't find many major labels because major labels won't allow their songs to be sold in MP3 format. However, from over 2 million songs to look through, it didn't take me long to max out my downloads.

If you do sign up you can also find free tracks. For example, this 2 disk album with 38 songs will not count against your downloads http://www.emusic.com/album/10992/10992865.html/

I just subscribed to http://emusic.com/. EVERYTHING they sell is DRM free, everything is sold as MP3. You can sign up for a trial and down load 25 songs. If you don't like it and cancel with in 2 weeks you get to keep the 25 songs for free. If you do like it keep your subscription. For $10 a month you get 30 songs. That's less then 35 cents per song, a third that cost of other online stores.

That's the good news. The bad news is that you won't find many major labels because major labels won't allow their songs to be sold in MP3 format. However, from over 2 million songs to look through, it didn't take me long to max out my downloads.

If you do sign up you can also find free tracks. For example, this 2 disk album with 38 songs will not count against your downloads http://www.emusic.com/album/10992/10992865.html/

http://www.emusic.com/ for gods sake. Almost not lossy (high bitrate+vbr) and no DRM is still better than lossless with DRM.

http://pandora.emusic.com

There you go.

No, Emusic encode their MP3s with LAME preset standard, which is average 192K VBR. Much, much better than 160K constant bitrate.

Once again I praise e-music.com for a really great range of music, great prices, and a pretty good user experience. And no DRM.

You won't find The Eagles or Brittney or other Top 40 stuff, but if you're the least bit adventurous* in your tastes it's well worth a look.

* Johnny Cash, James Brown, African music, Bjork etc...

AllofMP3 does nothing but illicitly make available tracks to make a profit. Sure, they claim to pay the Russian equivelant of BMI/ASCAP but that is not enough! To sell digital music you technically need to have the performance rights (a la BMI/ASCAP, etc...) but ALSO have a master agreement with the label. Oh... and you are also usually required to have a separate license for each region you are selling to. Do you think AllofMP3 has all of that in place?

First of all, the CEO of eMusic during the Napster Hearings was Gene Hoffman, and yes, he did agree with the court ordered injuction against Napster. Before he made that statement, he asked Napster to remove eMusic files from their index. He also asked that users who shared the songs be unbanned from Napster. Frankly, if I were selling unprotected music, I wouldn't call it "short-sighted" to ask another company not to let people give it away.

But eMusic wasn't just his company. Hoffman cofounded the company with Bob Kohn. Before that, both of them served on the board for Pretty Good Privacy. I know. Total "asshats".

Either way, the current CEO is David Pakman who has been speaking out against DRM since long before Steve Jobs did.

While I agree with boycotting companies for their beliefs and behavior (I don't buy major label music or anything Sony), I have to call bullshit in this case. eMusic provides distribution for many small record labels in a way that lets their users play the music whenever, and on whatever digital music player they want. They are priced fairly (I pay ~ $.18 a song). They have a good business model, and they're legal.

I'm sure it is possible to rationalize not paying for music no matter how it is provided to you. And if the option to obtain it for free exists, you certainly can take advantage of it. But criticizing a good company in a public forum based on outdated information to justify your refusal to pay for music only makes you look like an asshat.

Otherwise you will be condsidered a hypocrit and ignored.

EMusic has been around for years. Everything on the site is MP3.

They don't seem to be having any business difficulties. And for the record, I've been a subscriber for years.

In that case, check out William Elliott Whitmore. He's released three albums that are available on cd and vinyl(without mp3). He has a couple of songs available on eMusic and you can hear 4 of his songs on Daytrotter. He's got a great voice for a 28 year old kid from Iowa. His songwriting is timeless and he's good on the guitar and the banjo. He's one of my favorite artists.

DRM lockin! Awesome! I can't wait to sign up.

How about eMusic? I use this regularly and am always finding interesting new albums. Everything is DRM-free mp3s and the prices are very reasonable (30 /mo for $10, 50 for $15, 75 for $20). As a bonus, you get to know that you're not supporting the MAFIAA with your subscription.

It's a good place to find music. The metal and industrial sections are very good.

DRM lockin! Awesome! I can't wait to sign up.

How about eMusic? I use this regularly and am always finding interesting new albums. Everything is DRM-free mp3s and the prices are very reasonable (30 /mo for $10, 50 for $15, 75 for $20). As a bonus, you get to know that you're not supporting the MAFIAA with your subscription.

It's a good place to find music. The metal and industrial sections are very good.

Source?

Here: http://www.emusic.com/

• A hardware problem forces me to reformat my hard drive and reinstall iTunes more than 5 times.
  
• I forget the password to my iTunes Music Store account.
  
• I don't have Internet access.
  
• The iTunes Music Store goes out of business.

• The CD version of "Brothers and Sisters" is not encrypted.
  
• FM radio is not encrypted.
  
• The output of my stereo is not encrypted.
  
• The version Coldplay sells through eMusic is not encrypted.

• Preventing me from listening to my music if I lose my player.
  
• Preventing me from recording MY OWN music and giving it away.
  
• Preventing me from recording evidence of a crime and publishing it.
  
• Creating a police state in which it's illegal to write software without a license

In a couple minutes of browsing, I found eMusic, for example, has KOCH Records, which RIAA Radar flags up a warning status for. So, you already need to run checks if you want to keep your boycott up.

My view is that the big four aren't going to disappear any time soon, so if they can be persuaded to do something right, that's a good thing.