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I considered them for a while. I changed my mind when I found that their selection isn't all that great.

I browsed their catalog (which you can do without subscribing) to see what their selection is like. I wanted to purchase the songs that I have on vinyl and the stuff I recorded off of the radio back in the 80's. (I figure that purchased MP3s will sound better than what I'd get by digitizing them myself.)

Out of the approximately 250 songs on my list, emusic had less than 10 of them. Given their subscription price, it ended up being cheaper to just buy those songs on CD at a discount music store. (A few well-placed "hits of the 80's" compilation albums can cover a nice cross-section of my list.)

Although [Emusic.com] just got bought out and is significantly reducing the # of songs one can download, it has been an amazing value for lovers of non-pop genres, as well as contemporary indie pop stuff. I've been using it for 5-6 months and have mined their amazing jazz/blues/world catalog to my great satisfaction. I would guess I've paid a nickel a song at most, and that's about the right price. At their new rates, it is up to 30-40 cents per song, so you need to be pickier, but I'd still rather have a timeless gem for that price than a tune that will soon seem like last weeks news for a buck.

1. Yes, iTunes Music Store uses DRM. It is a simple (and admittedly regrettable) fact that right now no major label will allow digital distribution of their content w/o DRM. To Apple's credit, they have negotiated the least restrictive DRM scheme out there, except for that of eMusic, which sells DRM-free MP3 files.(And is the service I use for that reason.)

2. iTunes != iTMS. Once again: iTunes is not (just) an online music store. It is primarily a jukebox program. That's what I use it for -- I wouldn't buy from iTMS, since my player doesn't support AAC and I don't much care for DRM either.

3. MusicMatch is a terrible piece of software. Ditto RealOne. WMP is decent, but it scares me. A lot of people think Winamp is the bee's knees, and I admire it and its developers, but I've never quite cottoned to its playlist-oriented (rather than library-oriented, for lack of a better term) interface. So iTunes works for me, as an MP3 jukebox. YMMV. I guess Windows users do like choice, after all.

For another couple of weeks, Emusic.

The problems that I see with that model is that it is LEGAL for me to download a song I already own, so why would I be charged again for the same song?

Also, how will songs that are not copyrighted or are free to trade on P2P networks going to differ from those that aren't?

Personally, I think that more services like Emusic need to open up. I mean, we are the Internet generation, so why not market it to us like that?

I really wish some big name company would have the guts to start a 0.10c service for non-DRM downloads, available worldwide, and see how it goes.

It probably wouldn't go very well at all. Your company could have the best intentions in the world, but good luck getting record execs let songs go for that price or not have DRM on there. That's $1.40 and album, and the company running the service will have to take a cut of the money to stay profitable. Record execs are looking at digital music as a way to increase profits. $9.95 might seem like a nice price for a cd, but after the service's cut it's pure profit - no costs for shipping or printing, and an online service could take less of a cut of the price than a bricks-and-mortar store would. And I'd imagine that few industry executives would be brave enough to offer non-DRM downloads. I don't think record companies would be too willing to let the company's products float off into what they see as the unregulated, pirate-filled chaos of the Internet - even though music from store-bought CD's can be distributed almost as easily as MP3's. It's an opportunity to increase control on music while offering new freedoms.

I'm not saying that your idea is bad - actually, I think it would be great - but I don't think music executives would bite. There's just not a whole lot in it for them - I'm not sure such a service would get them many new customers, and their old ones who used the service might have an easier time getting their hands on independent music. Indie musicians might like a system like this, although there's already stuff like Emusic and Ampcast out there. Again, I think that what you proposed would be great, but I just can't see it happening. From the perspective of a service provider, I don't think it's an issue of guts so much as realities of the way the industry works.

I've heard this argument a lot, and I find the idea of a physical object to be quite overrated. I currently subscribe to Safari InformIT and I would gladly have this subscription to 10 outdated books lying on my bookshelf.

I would gladly have a subscription to eMusic (well, before Nov 8th maybe) than a stack of empty CD cases lying in my closet and whats left of my stolen CDs, scratched in my car.

iTunes for Windows will be a runaway success while EMusic and their new business model will flop even though it's cheaper.


and you thought I'd say BSD is Dying because I mentioned Kreskin, right?

which can be found here: http://www.emusic.com/bem/new_signup/terms.html

i must admit that the unlimited downloads (well not quite because they cut your service if you exceed 2000 songs in a month, but that was enought for me) was a big selling point for me. here is the important part the emphisis added:


2. MODIFICATION
We may add, delete or modify any of the aspects of our Service and/or any of the terms and conditions contained in this Agreement at any time in our sole discretion. We will notify you of any such changes via email or by posting a change notice on our site at http://www.emusic.com/subscriptions/ If any modification is unacceptable to you, you must stop using the Service. Unless otherwise specifically set forth in our notice, all changes be effective upon the date we notify you of the same ("effective date"). Your continued use of the Service following the effective date will constitute your binding acceptance of and agreement to be bound by the changes specified therein. You should check back frequently and review the terms and conditions of this agreement regularly so you are aware of the most current rights and obligations that apply to you and the terms and conditions of your agreement with us. If any new products or services become available, they will be considered a part of the Service and your use of them will be governed by the terms and conditions of this Agreement unless we notify you that different terms and conditions apply. You must also comply with any additional terms which apply to third-party content, material, information, software or other services.

To cancel your emusic subscription, click here. I already canceled mine. One a related note, as of today the emusic downloader is unable to retrieve more files after ten consecutive downloads, and must be restarted to work.

I not sure whether or not users will be committed to pay until the end of the account's three-month or one-year term, however. I recommend that anyone charged beyond October dispute the charges.

Yeah, absolutely. During my three-month stint with Emusic some time ago, I got a staggering amount of stuff. I got a couple of friends signed up for the service too, and it was great 'till one of them got unceremoniously kicked off for downloading too much. Now, I understand that they were probably losing money off of us, but I was really curious why they didn't just, you know, limit his downloads or something, rather than just dropping his account without any prior warning. I figured that eventually they'd wise up and drop the "unlimited downloads" thing and put some reasonable limits, but forty songs? As I mentioned in another post, what happens if you want to download a Gore Beyond Necropsy album? You're totally SOL, that's what.

Then again, I shouldn't complain seeing as though I used my $15/month subscription to download about 40GB of music over the course of three months, so I guess I got my money's worth. :P

Forty downloads though? What if you want to download a Gore Beyond Necropsy album? Seems you wouldn't be getting your money's worth at all. You'd blow all 40 songs on part of one album and end up with less than an hour of music.

Well, now they can make guaranteed payouts to rights holders; I'm not so sure this is a death knell. Probably an intense metamorphosis in subscriber base.

We've been saying it on the currently-dead message boards for months -- if all of Emusic's subscribers downloaded as much as we did, they'd expire overnight, taking in less than a penny per track.

It was only a matter of time before they had to revamp their pricing structure. I just didn't expect so drastic of a change.

----

Dear EMusic Subscriber,

Over the past several years, EMusic has stood alone in its commitment to providing digital music consumers a service that offers flexibility and portability. We remain the ONLY service offering downloads in the standard MP3 format.

We are also unique in our focus on music from the leading independent labels. Unlike other services, we understand that many music consumers want to go beyond the Billboard charts. We remain firmly committed to continuing to provide avid music fans an alternative to the mainstream.

The digital music industry continues to change rapidly, and EMusic also continues to evolve. The purpose of this letter is to inform you of a number of important changes that will affect EMusic Subscribers.

First, we are pleased to inform you that EMusic.com Inc. is being acquired by Dimensional Associates LLC ("Dimensional"), a private equity group focused on providing innovative online music distribution services. Dimensional shares EMusic's consumer focused philosophy of providing low cost, convenient access to great music. Dimensional plans to continue enhancing the EMusic service with new features and content and you can look forward to hearing more once the acquisition has been completed.

Although our current privacy policy remains in effect, http://www.emusic.com/help/privacy_policy.html, when the acquisition is completed, EMusic's privacy policy will be changing to reflect Dimensional's ownership and your Personal Information (as defined in the privacy policy) will be transferred to Dimensional. Please take a few moments to review this our new policy which will take effect around
October 30, 2003.

http://www.emusic.com/help/privacypolicy. html

As always, EMusic is firmly committed to consumer privacy and we believe the new policy continues to reinforce this.

As an avid digital music fan, you are also aware that the music industry continues to suffer under intense financial, legal and technological pressure. As a provider of music downloads, EMusic is subject to a complex system of intellectual property rights and technological challenges that impose high costs and often uncertain risks on the company.

In order to respond to these ongoing challenges and maintain a compelling service for our valued customers, EMusic will be making a number of significant changes in the coming weeks and months. As part of these changes, we will be discontinuing the unlimited service plan and replacing it with a new service offering.

Unless you visit the link below: http://help.emusic.com/cu/index.cgi?cmd=step2&st=1 &categoryID=1198 and notify us of your intention to cancel your subscription prior to November 8, 2003, your EMusic subscription will convert into EMusic Basic. Under EMusic Basic, you will be billed $9.99 per month for access to the service with no minimum monthly commitment, but you will be limited to no more than 40 downloads during your monthly billing cycle.

In addition, EMusic is pleased to present a special, limited time offer available exclusively to current subscribers - EMusic Premium. Designed for our most active subscribers, this plan allows you to download up to 300 tracks per month (approximately 25 albums) for a monthly charge of $50.00 - a price of just 16 cents per track - with no minimum monthly commitment.

If you are interested in registering for this subscription plan, you must complete the EMusic XL registration form no later than November 8, 2003.

http://help.emusic.com/cu/index.cgi?cmd=s tep2&st=1&categoryID=1998

You will still have unparalleled access to the best MP3s available from independent mu

Has anyone else out there been having problems accessing Google or Altavista?

Perhaps you're using malware: Check this thread out.

But if you're like me, into punk, techno and hip hop you should def. check [Emusic.com] out.

I'm not at all into punk, techno, or hip-hop. In fact, most music in those genres makes me cringe to hear it.

But I do enjoy classical, country, and folk music, and classic jazz. In the last year I've been with emusic, I've legally downloaded about 6000 (six thousand) mp3 tracks in those genres from emusic.

The classical music has really paid off for me: I was always wary of paying $16 for a classical CD when I wasn't sure of the quality of the performers: would I get beautiful music or a dud? With emusic, it's $10/month whether or not I download, so all I risk is the download time.

Also important to note is that what you download from emusic is MP3s. This means no DRM, which means anything that plays MP3s can play these tracks, including open-source players (like my portable MP3 player). No "phoning home" to some central server to get permission, no need for tedious and loss-y conversions, no need for special and proprietary software. And most emusic.com MP3s are lame -alt preset, which generally means an average bit rate of 192 kbps -- about what I'd rip myself from a CD.

So you can get a large range of genres, each with a large selection of artists and albums, you get no DRM annoyances, and you can download up to 2000 tracks per month for $10. And there's even a free trial period to give it a try. The future is at emusic.com

Some readers might think that at $10 a month and 2000 songs downloaded the artists aren't seeing much of that, and they're right. But this is the beauty of Emusic, the pricing can adjust itself based on approximate usage.

I'm not sure that this is actually how emusic shares it's revenues with labels, they may very well use aggreagates for pay outs. Let's assume or pretend that they take a monthly subscription fee and split it out over an account's monthly downloads. There have been months whne I have downloaded upwards of a hundred albums and listened to most of them maybe once or twice. Say this represents around $0.10 per album. In the old days I would have had to pay $20 for some of these albums. But if I am listening to so much music that I barely even touch an album, why should I have to pay $20 for it?

It ends up becoming more of a radio service when you are a heavy user. The difference is that for once the radio station is playing music that I like, loads of it, and it's also making recommendations and providing instant access. It's also a radio station where the artist may get paid around a penny in royalites when you listen to a song which just outdoes anything else in revenue potential.

Emusic this way also matches the marketing power of radio and then some as it's easy to preview many indie acts that come through town. At the shows I invariably drop some cash at their merch tables.

Of course having a massive amount of music to sample on the cheap has other huge marketing benefits for indie artists. Namely the ease with which mix cds are created for freinds from the mp3 format. Mix tapes/CDs of course having always been one of the major mdoes of transmission for music awareness in the absense of non-shitty radio.

On most months I have only downloaded 5-15 albums. Most of which I listened to several times resulting in an average pay out of $0.75-2 per record which is quite reasonable for what basically represents zero marginal cost to the label/artist. Especially if I listen to an album 5-10 time and then move on to something new, there is so much music out there that in the end it becomes rare to rely on only a few albums per month for entertainment once you get used to it.

This ends up flattening out the distribution of entertainment dollars to more artists in a pretty self-correcting way. It's what the end of physical distribution should be doing to entertainment: breaking up the innefiecient (from a market perspective) structures that create a few annointed (and talentless) millionaires and force the vast majority of super-talented musicians to toil on in relative obscurity.

Kalin

Dont forget EMusic!

Price: $9.99/month for a year or $14.99/month for 3 months. UNLIMITED download!
Format: LAME .mp3 --preset standard. VERY high quality! (200kbit+/sec).
Ethics: Labels get 50%..
Selection: Lots!

May I take this opportunity to suggest you check out emusic.com. I signed up for the 3 month at $15 a month subscription a few weeks ago and it's already MORE than met my expectations. I have over 1.5GB downloaded of high quality LAME encoded VBR non DRM mp3's already and there's NO LIMIT to how many you can get. Yes, sadly, they're part of Vivendi, but profits are split 50/50 with the artists.

>How about "a music service that doesn't impose draconian so-called copy-protection measures on its audio files" for those of us that dont but enough to make subscriptions worth while? or one where we can keep the music after the subscription is up?

Hmmm, ok. Here it is. Sorry you didn't hear about it the first time.

a music service that doesn't impose draconian so-called copy-protection measures on its audio files

I thought I'd do something more then my usual support independent (or independently minded) artist. There are a ton of artists out there not caught up in the whole piracy debate (since the rise of the net WAY more then most people imagine). CD's at the mall are no longer safe. The industry/distribution giants that have been hand feeding us are no longer (where they ever?) interested in fair practices.

But this isn't really that big a deal, because you can just type your way down to:

mp3.com
or
emusic.com
or
umbrellamusic.com
or
listen.com
or
mp3it.com
or
iuma.com
or
grageband.com
or
besonic.com
or
zebox.com

And it just keeps getting bigger and better out there. Really the only thing that needs to happen is we need to get comfortable with buying online artists. Maybe Rolling Stone will do an online section? *shrug*

Yep. If only someone were doing this.

Oh, wait. They are. EMusic.

Tons of great stuff. Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, TMBG, Ornette Coleman... No Britney, etc., but then, is that a bad thing?

Seriously, they don't have quite the catalog breadth of iTunes, etc. but for a flat fee you get all-you-can-eat, actual MP3 downloads.

No, I don't work for them; and no, that's not an affiliate link. EMusic just never seems to get mentioned when we're busy bashing all the DRM and music-rental strategies.

-paul

If an online music store wants to charge $1 for a 128kb/s mp3, I'm not going to whine. I'm just going to keep paying my $10/month to EMusic for up to 2000 tracks/month VBR 192kb/s-average mp3s. Excuse me while I go back to listening to the Pixies.

No-one's gonna license the music people want unless it's protected by DRM.

Really, maybe you should tell Emusic, cause they have a huge selection of music that I enjoy with no restrictions on anything. Oddly enough, look who owns them ......

I see people in /. begging for a legal and legit music distribution one second and then cursing D/RM the next... you cant have it both ways. this isnt a bad thing.

I must have just dreamed up EMusic then...

It, and services like it, may not have the endorsement of the big boys of the RIAA - but I don't listen to their music anyways. The fact that you can't find Britney on EMusic doesn't make it any less a music download service. You CAN have it both ways; sadly, the markets don't seem to work in this area. Rather than listen to the masses that have spoken their minds through the popularity of file-sharing, the RIAA has chosen to legislate the market back to familiar ground.

This is nothing new; industries have tried this as long as their has been a legal system that enables it. The current situation of the steel industry is heartening; because they could not compete against overseas producers, the paid politicians to impose tariffs on steel imports. However, though those tariffs are barely a year old, the industry backlash has already begun - turns out the tariffs hurt steel-consuming industries much more than it helps the steel producers.

It will probably take a lot longer, but this is similar to what will eventually happen with DRM. Laws will be enacted, until the point comes where Joe Public, who at the moment is oblivious to the massive potential downside of DRM, wakes up one morning and realizes he, and his business, is getting the short end of the stick. Partial repeals and reverse legislation will be passed in response to the backlash, until we get to a point where there is some balance between the producers and consumers.

-j

"Sure beats going to the record store," the advertisement concluded.

Ouch. That might come back to haunt them.


Hmm... it's not like there aren't any legit download services.

Or, the "independent" (does it strike anyone else that's not an accurate term?) artists could go on EMusic, and get paid more than a fraction of a cent per track while their customers pay a very reasonable $10/month flat fee.

Oh, wait, that already happens.

(Disclosure: I'm an EMusic addict.)

This Harmonix-developed title, originally unveiled a couple of months back, sports "more than 35 tracks in all"

Ok, I don't want to beat a tired drum, to mix a metaphor into a bad pun, but...

Will it support any arbitrary mp3 I have?

35 tracks is pretty scanty, and I don't want to sing along to Mr. Mister (an 80s band?).

But I have three mp3s of "When I was a Lad", as I have three (legally purchased) different copies of Giilbert & Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore". Now that I'd love to sing along to.

Similarly, I have two complete recordings of Wagner's Ring Cycle, (one from emusic.com at $10 a month and one for $160.00 from Amazon.com -- emusic's not a bad bargain, although disc one of Seigfried's still missing).

And I have a German sing-along version of The Internationale played on guitar, apparently recorded in the heyday of the DDR (and I don't mean Dance Dance Revolution).

I mention these titles not to display my eclecticism (well, ok, not only to display it) but because these are titles that I can't ever imagine finding in a commercial Karaoke product (outside some "worker's paradise") but are at the same time ones I'd really enjoy singing along to.

And this is a general plea -- to manufacturers as well as to the Slashdot choir -- for open standards and interoperability: a karaoke machine tied to a proprietary standard which forces me to pay for karaoke versions of songs I already have, or for which the songs I want aren't available, is less than useless to me. I won't buy it, and the manufacturer won't get my money. A loss-loss.

A karaoke machine that plays my music, and makes my tone-deaf bleatings sound a bit more musical, however, would be worth my money. And I note that the open source software I use in my portable my mp3 player does provide a "poor man's" karaoke function by subtracting the right side of stereo output from the left and vice versa. It's not perfect, and that's why I'd pay for a more adaptable algorithim and the hardware to implement it.

But "Mr. Mister" and 34 other "Backstreet Boys In Sync with Britney and Other American Idles (sic)" I'm not interrested in. A proprietary and costly path to getting more tunes, I'm not paying for. A well designed open format karaoke machine, I'd vote for with my dollars.

Are there any websites that offer ... high quality MP3s?

You mean other than eMusic, now that it has upgraded its MP3 encodings from 128 CBR to 192 nominal VBR?

Anything at all the publishers are offering "legally" in a format of higher quality than I have been getting (for years) absolutely free via USENET?

Server operating systems are available as free software, and they're typically less susceptible to the most common sploits than the Microsoft Windows Server OS that you may be able to find on Usenet.

A lot of people happen to like "mindless punk rock by kids who can't play the guitar." not to mention politically oriented punk rock by kids who can't play the guitar.

These days I prefer to listen to tape loops and vacuum cleaners and other experimental music.

"I spent $29.95 on Kazaa and thought I could download thousands of dollars of CDs, movies, software and pr0n."

Just like "I paid emusic.com $10/month and thought I could download thousands of dollars of CD's"
Guess what...you can.

2 What You Can't Do Under This Licence
2.6 Transmit, access or communicate any data that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights of any party;

8. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS
8.2 Except as expressly provided herein, you are not granted any rights or license to patents, copyrights, trade secrets or trademarks with respect to the Service or its contents, and EMusic reserves all rights not expressly granted hereunder.

To the casual user, the apparent differences might not be that obvious.

For $10/mo I just signed up for an RIAA-free emusic account

Um, no. Vivendi Universal, owner of emusic, also owns Universal Records, an RIAA member. In fact, the first label I recognized on that RIAA membership roster, 4AD, also appears on emusic. For that matter, the label for the box set you mention downloading is also an RIAA member. You may not be landing as much cash in their pockets, but it's not "RIAA-free" by any means.

To add my own rant, I should mention that emusic is the only company that has ever flatly stolen my money. (Partial details here if you're interested.) As much as I liked the service for 3 days, I'd say you should be wary of these guys. The Better Business Bureau record on emusic pretty well supports this point, but (to my mind) it doesn't really emphasize the point enough.

Here's a list of all the Metropolis artists available at EMusic.com. $15/month, unlimited downloads, all in MP3 format...

-Chris

Here's a list of all the Metropolis artists available at EMusic.com. $15/month, unlimited downloads, all in MP3 format...

-Chris

Hurting other, legit, online services

From the Kazaa website:
"Download and buy"
Search, download, share
24 hour customer support
Only $29.95

From emusic.
Unlimited mp3's - One low monthly price
Download Play Burn
Get 50 free mp3's

From ITunes:
Instantly buy and download music
Share music within the same household
Search using more options

Quite similar, eh? You pay money to (someone), and in return, you can search for, and download music to your PC. How is the casual user/parent supposed to know that only one of these 3 services is not quite legal? And by using it, you are liable to be sued into financial ruin by some nameless 'association' you've never heard of.

The only mention of "copyrights", and not violating such, is 2 or 3 mouseclicks away, couched in dense legalese. Nowhere does it say on the Kazaa site that use of their service does not constitute a legal transaction. And even then, you paid money. Kazaa appears to be as completely legit as the other two.

The real upshot of this might be to drive people away from the legit services.
Downloading music = lawsuit. Guess I'd better not download music from anywhere, cause it's too damn hard to tell what is legit.

Again....
emusic - $10/month
iTunes - $0.99 per song
KazaaPlus - $29.95
You pay money to (someone), your modem connects, you download music from (somewhere), you listen.

You and I know the diff, but put yourself in Brianna's mom's place.
"We're not downloading any music online, from anywhere, ever again."

They're going through their library and re-encoding nearly everything at 192 VBR, using Lame 3.92.

They're going through their library and re-encoding nearly everything at 192 VBR, using Lame 3.92.

eMusic was bought by Vivendi Universal so you'd just be feeding money to the RIAA anyway. I was a subscriber for a year but axed my account after Universal screwed over some of my favorite artists at MP3.com.

I'm not sure how this keeps escaping people but eMusic is owned by Vivendi Universal. That makes it officially NOT RIAA free!

For $10/mo I just signed up for an RIAA-free emusic account [emusic.com].

Also, EMusic astroturfers may bugger off.

Yes they do suck, so instead of just complaining about it, do something.

Don't buy RIAA CD's, or goto places like emusic that is RIAA free.

If you can't find the music download it if you have to, however go the extra step, locate the band of the music you downloaded and cut *THEM* a cheque.

Let them see the power of this distribution method.

Excellent point. For that matter purchasing online music as opposed to CDs from RIAA labels is equally bad.

Here are some of my independent sources:

A Different Drum
Emusic

Where do you go?

Michael.

The article is laden with sickly quotes about how "we're so sorry we never knew it was bad" but I want to respond to this in particular:

they mistakenly believed they were entitled to download music over the Internet because they had paid $29.99 for software that gives them access to online file-sharing services

I'm sure there will be plenty of threads here along the lines of: "$29.99 for all you can download... come on.... an "honor roll" student thought that a legit deal?" Please just consider this:

For $10/mo I just signed up for an RIAA-free emusic account , and in the first 30 minutes downloaded this $230 CD boxed set in MP3 format - free of DRM and ready to play wherever I want. I also snagged all the George Carlin CDs just because they were top downloads, but I'm also having fun perusing their classical music selections.

While I am hopelessly out of touch with the popular music scene, having not purchased a CD in over three years, I will admit that the stuff on emusic is not the kind of thing I would otherwise have picked up in a CD store. But I am VERY satisfied with what they have.. whatever latent urge I once had to go out and buy a CD has been completely erased.

So give the girl a break. She may come off as an idiot, but let's not pretend that $29.99 is a lot to pay for a few gigs of zeroes and ones.

<plug>PS If you have an emusic account please check out my product for a great way to listen to your songs!</plug>

I no longer share files, except with select people that I know, and we do it through scp or ftp, and we share seldomly. I feel that I am doing this legally because I own (or they own) the CD's that I am sharing music from, though it probably is not. However, in the heyday of napster, I was sharing about 1,000 files. And those were 1,000 files that I owned CD's for, or that friends had given me. I shared them so that I could sample other people's music collection and find new music that spoke to me.

My intent wasn't piracy, just as it isn't for > 99% of users of P2P. When napster was around I bought WAY too much music and found some really great bands I never would have heard of in our homogenized RIAA music world, such as Fountains of Wayne, Nerf Herder, and Clem Snide. And guess what? When I stopped sharing, I stopped buying.

Just because the average P2P user shares their entire music collection doesn't mean they're trying to buck the system or circumvent copyright. Some people just love music and don't know any better. Their intent is not piracy - it's listening to new music. What we need is just what the EFF (eff.org) proposes: a way to share music and compensate ARTISTS.

Somewhat off-topic, but I've seen seen several legal music sites reviewed in various places (most recently Spin magazine), but seldom does anyone mention eMusic(eMusic.com). They don't have the greatest catalogue (they do have They Might Be Giants!), but they allow the greatest freedom at the right price.

My Anonymous $.02

Seems like more storage doesn't make a difference at some point (ooh 15,000 songs instead of 10,000).

I, for one, have been waiting over a year for the iPod to get to 40gb. I bought a 5 gb, and replaced with a 10 gb. But my music collection is currently 27 gb and growing at almost 5 gigs/ years [*]. At 40 GB, I'll finally be able to get my music portable, for the first time ever. Of course, I'll still need a biger one in three years....

[*] All legit, most listened to regularly. I have a serious classical music collection ripped at 192 combined with an emusic subscription (all you can eat DRM-free 128 mp3s for $10/month. i listen to several hours a music a day and listening to the SAME music day after day doesn't work for me. I can't even stand my local classical station (KUSC) because even they are too repetitious for me.

I remember in the mid-90s Garth Brooks became a part of the "movement" to stop used CD sales, or at least keep used CDs separate from new CDs. (The Warehouse was just starting to sell used CDs in addition to new CDs.) Anyway, he was speaking out against used CD sales, and the record companies were giving less money for advertising to record stores that also sold used CDs. A record store in Eugene, Oregon (where I lived at the time) had a Garth Brooks BBQ.

They were literally burning the CDs.

Ironically, Garth Brooks is probably one of the very few people who actually make a decent living off of the music industry.

(And I was going to get off topic at this point talking about how I hate Garth Brooks and not because I hate all country music. I do dislike most of it but some stuff is good like Johnny Cash, the Dixie Chicks and Mojo Nixon. Buuuuut that would be getting pretty off topic so I won't mention it.)

I haven't bought any CDs in a long time -- just too expensive and I won't support the copy-protection nonsense. But I do need my new music fix, so I subscribed to emusic. $10 a month for all the DRM-free mp3s I can download. It's been well worth it, and it's allowed me to get new music without running to the record store to pay extortionist prices for crippled products.

There's a nice article on emusic and its advantages here.

No, they're not paying me, but I heard about emusic from a similar Slashdot discussion, so I figured I'd return the favor.

Lets hope this trend continues in Europe. I used to buy loads of CDs back in my salad days at university, mostly in 3 for 20 quid sales in HMV. But I'll be buggered if I'm paying the going rate for new albums in the UK. 15 quid is common place these days for a new release. I tried to buy a copy of David Gray's White Ladder last week for the wife... 17 quid in all the larger stores. So I cocked a snook at those bums and got it for 10 quid on amazon.

Of course, I'm also signed up to Emusic, which delivers me a couple of hundred legal albums a month for a mere tenner. Its not chart material, admittedly, but I've found more good stuff on there than in 10 years of thumbing through commerical artists in HMV.

At the current album prices, I see little reason to continue buying CDs alongside my Emusic downloads - much as I like the feel of something tangible in my hands. But a drop to 10 quid an album (say) might justify having the two buying methods coexisting again.

AtomFilms
IFilm

Where's the free music (not "pirated", but legitimate)?

MP3.com
iRATE
FreeMusic
EMusic (okay, not free, but flat-rate and dirt cheap)

Where's the *value*?

That's up to you to decide, of course. But there's plenty of legitimate big content out there.