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>>Good luck. How many labels are going to allow their music to be sold in a DRM-unencumbered format?

>Probably none

Really? Someone had better tell the 18560 labels selling through EMusic about that.

I do like the feature on emusic.com where you can sample the selection.
Try this one.
It's "I'm a disco dancer", you'll love it.
They send you the song at 192 bps, so you need broadband.
Wonder if Mandriva's setup can do that?

Amusingly the album 'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea' is available on eMusic.com in unencumbered mp3 format.

Link

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

Doesn't matter. I won't give them anything. eMusic gets my money. Unencumbered VBR MP3s of most of my favorite bands are around 25 cents apiece. It's nice to support bands that actually want their music to be heard and labels that don't assume that users==criminals.

Seriously, if you even have a slight inclination towards indie music, you *need* to check it out.

Emusic.

The alternative is DRM free mp3 .. but then you lose the ability to protect your music.

It's what many smaller, indie artists do. See Emusic.com.

Plus when your HDD dies .. you cant regain your music.

This isn't completely true. One, the music can still be copied to CD, to another hard drive, or to any number of iPods to be backed up. Secondly--and I have no first-hand knowledge of this--it is said that Apple will allow you to redownload the songs you have bought, once, if something happens and you lose them all.

I'm no Apple fanboy, but wanted to point those parts out.

That being said, the first part is largely true. You can scrub the music with something such as JHymn, but that doesn't work with iTunes 6.0, and is quasi-legal at best (or maybe downright illegal, not sure). I would debate, however, that an artist must use Fairplay DRM to become a success (both due to the abiguity of the word and to acts that haven't been on iTunes for very long, such as Madonna), or that MS's Plays For Sure is any better.

on emusic. I buy there whenever possible, to 'protest DRM with my wallet' so to speak. Otherwise I just buy the CD and rip it.

Maybe if they notice the bands I listen to, they will make deals to distribute music from Epitaph and Fat Wreck Chords artists. . . 'cause currently iTunes have almost nothing I want to listen to.

Printer and Xerox music

The User - Symphony #2 For Dot Matrix Printers:
http://www.emusic.com/album/10735/10735064.html

Xerophonics:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00008NGDB/qid=11 36825794/sr=11-1/103-5928890-1815068

In online music services you can sell individual songs permanently, or you can sell timed access to a huge song library. Either model has its pros and cons, but you have to pick one.

The reason it won't work on iPods is because Apple won't let it work on iPods.

Nonsense. If Microsoft wish to sell music that will play on iPods, they're free to provide music in unencumbered MP3 format, as online stores such as eMusic and Magnatune currently do. What you're suggesting is that Apple should specifically support a proprietary format designed solely to be used by competing stores on a competing operating system.

Surely the onus here should be on Microsoft, not Apple? What you're asking is about as realistic as expecting Microsoft to provide a fully-featured Windows Media Player for Linux.

Use emusic, which sells MP3s only. If you've never heard of any of the bands, then I guess I pity you because that would mean that you only like shitty britney spears/mtv crap. In which case, wtf do you care about music anyway? Go watch MTV and listen to clear channel like a good sheep.

baaaaaaaa!

Stop listening to top 40 radio.

Buy stuff from independent record stores. If there isn't one around you (or the obnoxious music nerds[1] there put you off), try something like Neighborhoodies, who sell, in addition to the clothes their known for, a pretty decent selection of recent CDs that are pretty much all good.

Get a free subscription to eMusic. You get 50 free songs, in unencumbered, no bullshit MP3 format, all of it from independent record labels. Check the sales charts for your favorite genres to see what other people are listening to, and you can always listen to samples before you buy. eMusic are legit, they've been around for years, and I'm a member myself. I could probably add a referal link or something, but I'm too lazy.

Once you find some decent bands, look up their albums on Amazon (a good source for used CDs), and check the reccomendations from there, as well as any ListMania! lists or So You Want To... thingies. If you use iTunes, listen to samples there, and check the "Listeners also bought..." reccomendations for any music you like.

Also, pay attention to indie lables - many times bands on them will have a similar 'sound', so that liking one band will often lead to liking others (ie, Saddle Creek, a favorite of mine, or DFA). Many labels also have sampler or compilation CDs which are either free or very cheap.

So don't complain that there's no good new music. 2005 has been great for music. For MTV/Clear Channel pop garbage? No idea, but who really cares?

===
1. this is how normal people see Linux users.

You should check out emusic.com if you haven't already. They have $0.25 a song with no DRM at all, just straight up mp3s. The only downside is that it's mostly independant record labels, but there is still a metric fuck-ton of quality music.

Audio Lunchbox

EMusic

Both offer regular old MP3s (and AL offers .ogg). No Britney Spears, but a decent (not perfect, but decent) selection of good music. For less commercial music, there's also Magnatune, but I've not had much success finding stuff I really want there (other people seem to enjoy it, though).

http://www.emusic.com/

Rhapsody isn't the only one, there's also eMusic, the development of the Linux version of the download manager has been discontinued, but it works.

Yup. I only buy from emusic anymore.

The slashdot crowd just wants to bully us into working for free

AllOfMp3.com (no hyperlink intentional) is copyright infringment. Except instead of doing so via P2P, you pay someone else to do it for you. Then, using a little international and Russian law loopholes, you feel good about sticking it to the man? Sorry, that's pathetic. The RIAA is bad enough. If you don't support their business model don't buy their music. Don't pay someone else to infringe on thier copyright either. Do not pass Go.

emusic.com. 40 MP3s for $10/month. 90 MP3s for $20/month. No DRM, excellent selection, fastest pipe I've seen for downloading music. Yes, my soapbox is comfortable, but I put my money where my mouth is.

How do you then ensure that the music and player you buy today will not be incompatible with your player, online store or the OS?"

Easy, only buy music from people willing to let you listen to it. Places like emusic and magnatune sell completely unrestricted music files. And shit, archive.org gives away thousands of hours of music for free.

Vote with your wallet. If DRM is unacceptable, don't buy from people who would push it on you. There's plenty of music out there that's not DRM'd, and it's mostly better than the RIAA crap. Good musicians can afford to give music away, there's plenty more where that came from.

If you were treated the same way in a physical store that Apple or Napster treats you online, you'd storm out angrily and never shop there again. Why should online stores be any different?

Use either eMusic (http://www.emusic.com/ or Mindawn (http://www.mindawn.com./ It's the only way to be sure the music is yours to do with as you please. If either of these sites don't have the title I'm looking for, I buy the CD and rip it myself.

Or even more betterer, buy your music from a cheaper, DRM-free place that doesn't have the hidden cost of kneecaps broken by the russian mob. http://www.emusic.com/

I have been subscribing to emusic for about two years now, and they provide exactly what you just described. If you type in an artist's name, emusic will show you not only the artist you searched for, but other artists that you may also be interested in who have a similar type of style. They will return these results even if the artist you originally searched for is not available from their website.

Another great feature is that based off of your download history, emusic will display what other people who have downloaded some of the same albums/artists also downloaded. It's a great way to discover bands you have never heard of.

For something more legally and ethically unambiguous there is also MP3tunes and eMusic, though they both have limited selections of generally independent music. Strangely enough mp3.com doesn't seem to have mp3s on it anymore. There's also some labels like Magnatune that distribute mp3s.

The most annoying thing I find is that it's not even true.

iTunes of course is software that Apple provide that allows you to upload to your iPod (the sort of software you'd expect any MP3 player vendor to provide with their hardware), and there are 3rd party utilities - both commercial and free - that also offer this functionality.

This is distinct from the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) which was added after iTunes and iPod's had already been available for some time, but is a feature of the software (for logical reasons, as it would be much less user friendly if it had a completely separate application window).

You can of course use music from stores with the iPod. I buy from the iTMS, but I also buy MP3's from the outstanding Emusic all the time (I like the service as you get plain MP3's so there is no messing about with keys or authorisation, and you can entire albums as single .zip archives and you can re-download stuff as much as you like if you have an active subscription, the only thing I don't like about it is the 'subscription' model rather than the more traditional pay-per-song model).

The 'problem' is that the iTunes Music Store only supports iTunes, which only (officially) supports the iPod (though unoffically it's possible to use it with a number of devices using 3rd party plug-ins), NOT that the iPod is somehow 'locked in' to the iTMS, which it isn't.

This is a premise that a 10 year old should be able to grasp, but is apparently way above the heads of Chris Nickson, the editors at Designtechnica, ScuttleMonkey and prostoalex.

Join emusic.com. High quality drm-free mp3s, great selection of independent artists, fast downloads, much cheaper than itunes.

Addicted to the major labels and couldn't possibly live without their music? Yourmusic.com, $6/CD. It's a music club, so they're not going to have everything, but almost everything that's popular enough they'll have a few months after the retail stores do.

I agree wholeheartedly. That's why I use http://emusic.com/. The albums are all indie label, the songs cost a little over $.25 each (if you buy the higher sub)and are in high-bit-rate, non-DRM'd .mp3 format. I've complained to my friends and co-workers for years that $.99 a song is a rip-off, not a "Good Deal". I buy all my music from Emusic now, and couldn't be happier with it.

Also, the Emusic search page is here: search

eMusic: Had to register before I could even take a look at what music they had. No thanks.

eMusic: Had to register before I could even take a look at what music they had. No thanks.

Independent labels. Plenty of good stuff on those, and they won't jerk you around with high prices and DRM like the RIAAs will. RIAA Radar and eMusic are excellent places to start.

If you do need an RIAA CD once in awhile then getting it used doesn't do anything to the bastards' bottom line.

Only this time it's on topic!

They just got Sufjan Stevens in which is nice. Been looking forward to that. The Alarm, The Hold Steady, Antony and the Johnsons, Arcade Fire, The Microphones, The Pixies, at 25 cents a track, high quality Lame VBR encodings - what are you waiting for?

Do you believe there is anything to be learned by the development process that goes on in the open-source community? What can the open-source community learn and actually implement, given the structure of the community, from the development process at a place like MS? (If this is considered two questions, please answer the latter)

---

eMusic.com is where it's at.

How about we link to a service which is known to compensate artists, supports Linux, and offers high quality (192 avg bitrate VBR, lame encoded) mp3s without DRM for about $0.25 per track, like EMusic? The don't have the major artists that iTunes has, but at least they have a more substantial catalogue than Mindawn (who had heard of this site before reading this story?), comprised mainly of indie rock that college kids might be inclined to listen to. They're also cheaper than Mindawn, and they have artists that at least some segment of the population has heard of, namely those who pay attention to music criticism.

I'm all about supporting sites with unique and obscure catalogs but jeez, this is ridiculous. This provider is the internet's version of a ghost town. Except they don't even have tumbleweeds. Why even post an article like this? Bleh. If you want a real alternative, check out eMusic.com.

we should support "smaller" sites like eMusic, so they can expand their selection to include more popular selectioins and have a chance to compete with the likes of iTunes. They off high quality, legal, non-DRM mp3s for 22-25 cents (depending on your monthly plan). Right now they are offering 50 free downloads from their very unique catalog (of which you can cancel if you like, but I'm sure not going to). Some of the stuff you can get from iTunes (so it's cheaper from eMusic.com) but a lot of you can't because it's from mostly independent labels or back-collections. If you like great music no-one's heard of, this is your site. The user-base seems pretty knowledable about what's good, so their "list" feature is nice. They also have incorporated some social networking/clustering features which allow you to see who your "neighbors" are with common interests. Supporting a site like eMusic, allows them to expand their already great selection, so check them out: eMusic.com. At least try it out, get your free mp3s, and then decide. They are offering 50 free because they believe that once you try it, you'll want to continue using the service; it's the best kind of advertising gimmick there is: offering a good product.

Maybe not "as popular as Apple's iTunes", but have you ever tried emusic.com?

I really wouldn't hold your breath (although it doesn't look like you are). For most people, that 5% quality loss is worth the portability and cost savings of something like MP3, and to the retailer, it's worth the lesser storage and bandwidth.

I, for one, am a happy consumer of MP3-format music. As long as I can, you know, rock out or whatever, I'm fine with it.

is support sites like eMusic. They off high quality, legal, non-DRM mp3s for 22-25 cents (depending on your monthly plan). Right now they are offering 50 free downloads from their very unique catalog (of which you can cancel if you like, but I'm sure not going to). Some of the stuff you can get from iTunes (so it's cheaper from eMusic.com) but a lot of you can't because it's from mostly independent labels or back-collections. If you like great music no-one's heard of, this is your site. The user-base seems pretty knowledable about what's good, so their "list" feature is nice. They also have incorporated some social networking/clustering features which allow you to see who your "neighbors" are with common interests. Supporting a site like eMusic, allows them to expand their already great selection, so check them out: eMusic.com. At least try it out, get your free mp3s, and then decide. They are offering 50 free because they believe that once you try it, you'll want to continue using the service; it's the best kind of advertising gimmick there is: offering a good product.

Buy a song that has DRM (most online music stores anyway) and which takes away the freedom that you had when buying an album.

Yup, that's why I'll never buy (actually it's more like renting than buying) DRM'ed music.

I'll keep on buying CDs.

I also believe in supporting online music stores that don't use DRM. I've been using eMusic for a few months now and I'm very happy with them. Yes you won't find the latest hits there, but I've found lots of music there that is in my mind better than that crap anyway.

I can tell you this, and I post anonymously for reasons that will soon be clear; some people who download legally (from emusic.com)also download illegally. Mainly due to it not being available (or not knowing) on emusic.com.

I used Emusic.com back when I had disposable income. You get something like 30 songs for $15 a month. MP3 format with no copy protection what-so-ever. It's mostly independent music but I've found some truly amazing music that is far better than stuff on the radio. You just have to dig a little bit. They have a good trial you can check out.

Not to advertise or anything, but eMusic has unprotected mp3's for download. It's mostly indie artists, but they have a sizeable collection.

http://www.emusic.com/

http://www.magnatunes.com/

http://www.emusic.com/

Not much for major-label, but I still burn up my 90/mo. (And, IIRC, CDBaby's listed on there as well.)

Great artist like
Ray Charles
Louis Armstrong
Bob Marley
CCR

All DRM free mp3s.

Support non DRM music providers like Emusic which allow users the freedom to choose which hardware their music plays on.